‘Autism Epidemic Is Real and Overvaccination Is Its Cause’: A Conversation With Mark Blaxill

Mark Blaxill, chief financial officer of the Holland Center, a private autism treatment center and…

Children's Health Defense

April is Autism Awareness Month — or as it’s been rebranded, Autism Acceptance Month.

Every year this time, public health officials, the media and some autism organizations tell us how autism should be celebrated and embraced — how it’s a condition more akin to a quirk than a lifelong disability, one for which a growing number of diagnoses is a sign of “inclusivity.”

Speaking to “The Defender In-Depth” this week — one day after Children’s Health Defense filed a motion in federal court alleging government lawyers hid evidence that vaccines can cause autism — Mark Blaxill, co-author of “Denial: How Refusing to Face the Facts about Our Autism Epidemic Hurts Children, Families, and Our Future,” shared a different view.

Blaxill, chief financial officer of the Holland Center, a private autism treatment center, is the father of an autistic adult daughter. After his daughter’s diagnosis, Blaxill began studying the causes of autism. His research led him to publish “Denial” and several scientific papers on autism.

Blaxill criticized attempts to normalize autism and claims that increases in autism diagnoses are simply due to improvements in detection.

He said public health agencies have repeatedly lied about the causes of autism, and he warned of a “coming tsunami” of autism caregiving, as the autistic children of the 1990s onward become adults and lose their parents, who are often their caretakers.

‘Sharp inflection point’ after expansion of childhood vaccination schedule

According to Blaxill, when he first began researching autism, the consensus rate of the autism prevalence rate was about 1 in 4,000 to 1 in 5,000. He said he observed at the time that “there was almost no autism in developing nations, that it was pretty much a disease of the developed world.”

“Today we’re talking about 1 in 36, 1 in 29,” Blaxill said. “Things don’t change that rapidly if they’re not real.

Blaxill conceded there are children with autism who never received a vaccine, whose diagnoses were likely due to environmental factors, including exposure to pesticides and other chemicals.

But, he said — quoting autism researcher and author Bernard Rimland — “The autism epidemic is real and overvaccination is its cause.”

There was a “sharp inflection point in 1990” after which autism rates exploded, Blaxill said. The most obvious change that affected children “across the country at a very clear point in time was the change in the childhood immunization practices.”

In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Blaxill said, “Shortly thereafter, two new vaccines, very high technology vaccines, the hepatitis B vaccine and the Haemophilus influenzae Type B vaccine were introduced. Those two vaccines used thimerosal [an organomercury compound] as a preservative.”

‘Before 1930, the rate of autism in the world was effectively zero’

Blaxill refuted commonly heard claims that autism rates are increasing because methods of diagnosing the condition have improved.

According to Blaxill, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has, since the birth year of 1992, performed an annual autism prevalence survey. The agency used the same methodology every year to perform the survey.

Blaxill said there are three arguments people use to deny “the reality of an autism epidemic” and explain rising autism cases.

According to the “diagnostic substitution” method, children who used to be classified as having an intellectual disability are now being diagnosed with autism.

“That’s just wrong — the data don’t support that,” Blaxill said. “Intellectual disability rates have stayed pretty constant and autism rates have exploded.”

Another argument, “diagnostic expansion,” claims that criteria for diagnosing autism were broadened by adding conditions such as Asperger’s syndrome to the classification. But even controlling for this, autism rates “are exploding,” Blaxill said.

The third argument, “diagnostic oversight,” holds that autism was always prevalent but went undiagnosed. Blaxill said this argument is “more elusive to refute, but it’s also catastrophically wrong. It’s sloppy, lazy, doesn’t look at historical evidence.”

“Before 1930, the rate of autism in the world was effectively zero,” Blaxill said…