Episode 313 — Consensus ISN’T The Same As Truth
Guest: Aaron Siri • Date: June 25, 2026
Episode Overview
Aaron Siri is one of the leading legal voices challenging vaccine mandates and advocating for informed consent, government transparency, and medical freedom. In this conversation, he explains why parents must think critically, ask harder questions, and understand the difference between consensus and actual evidence.
About Aaron Siri
Aaron Siri is the author of Vaccines, Amen, host of the Informed w/ Aaron Siri podcast, and Managing Partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP, a national law firm focused on civil rights, constitutional law, and complex litigation. He has led numerous high-profile legal challenges involving medical mandates, government transparency, and informed consent, including efforts that resulted in the release of Pfizer's Covid-19 clinical trial documents and the restoration of vaccine exemptions affecting hundreds of thousands of students. Aaron is a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law and is widely recognized for his work advancing informed consent, medical freedom, and government transparency.
You’ll Discover
Why one product is treated differently than almost every other product on the market (2:05)
Why doing your own homework matters more than most parents realize (15:10)
The difference between consensus and actual evidence (27:48)
What a federal lawsuit revealed about the studies behind a major public health claim (33:36)
Why informed consent requires the freedom to say no (38:20)
Full Transcript
Aaron Siri 0:00
Most people don't wake up one day and say, you know, what I want to do today. I want to take a socially ostracizing position that might get my kids out of school, meet them out of my job, potentially my kids excluded from playdates, call all kinds of pejoratives, have the news media talk about how we shouldn't be treated in emergency rooms. Yeah, that's what I want to do today. No, most people do not make this decision lightly, and I find they've often - they, or somebody they know, has had a very direct experience by these products, but I often find that alone is not enough. It's usually that coupled with they then did their own research, they did their own homework. If you're a parent of a child with autism, you are being called to rise with love, courage, and clarity, this journey isn't easy, and most parents aren't equipped, but you can be. This podcast is your invitation to rise higher, because how you navigate matters. I'm Len, and this is Autism Parenting Secrets, where you become the parent your child needs now.
Len Arcuri 1:00
Hello, and welcome. Last week on this podcast, Dell Big Tree shared a powerful message about courage and why parents no longer can afford to simply lay low. And this week's conversation continues that theme. This week, I'm joined by Aaron Siri, managing partner of Siri and Glimstad and author of the new book Vaccines Amen, Aaron has become one of the leading legal voices challenging government agencies and pharmaceutical companies around vaccine safety, informed consent, and medical transparency, and I recently saw Aaron speak at the Autism Health Summit in San Diego, and what stood out most for me was his challenge for parents to think more deeply about the difference between consensus and actual evidence. So, the secret this week is consensus isn't the same as truth. Welcome, Aaron.
Aaron Siri 1:57
Good to be here.
Len Arcuri 1:57
Fantastic. Well, I thought your presentation was dynamite, and I guess to ask you, right, right at the outset, to bottom line it, what do you think the biggest thing is that parents might assume is settled science that actually deserves much more scrutiny.
Aaron Siri 2:13
Well, you know, the area I work in, it comes to mandated medicine, vaccines, and I would say that when it comes to vaccines, that is probably the area, the product that parents must research more than anything else, more than any car seat they're going to buy, any stroller, any car they eventually want to buy their child, what mattress they want to use, what sheets they want to use, what building the children are using to build the house our baby's gonna live in, and the reason for that is, is actually relatively simple, and it's because for every other product out there, except for childhood vaccines, and those childhood vaccines used by adults, like flu shots, the market will, with imperfections, correct for the harms that they would cause, or for ones that might not be safe over time. The companies that put out a product that could cause harm, first they have an incentive not to do that, because they don't want to lose money. And after they put it out, they can be held accountable, so they correct over time. Cars are safer because you can hold car companies accountable, that seatbelt could have been designed better, that airbag could have been designed better, the airbag could have, should have been there. Period. The frame of the car, the way it crushed, you name it, you go down the road of the gas tank, you know, should lines and have exploded when a little hit came from all of these things, you can hold the company accountable. Same with drugs, drugs come off the market all the time because the company's gonna be held accountable. Many drugs never make it to market because when they're trialed they find they have problems. All of that to say that is just not the case with really only one product, and that's vaccines. That's because of a law called the National Childhood Accidents Diary Act of 1986 and that law made it so that no matter how much safer the company could have made the product when they were developing it, could make the product after licensing it. No matter how much safer they can make it, you can never sue them to say, "Had you made the product safer, my child wouldn't be injured, my child wouldn't be killed, my child wouldn't have a chronic health issue. Vaccines are pretty the only product that has that permanent immunity, and with that immunity, what that means is that you just can't rely on the normal market forces to make sure that that stroller, the prior iterations of it that got recalled because there was some serious issue is not going to continue, right. You have a certain level of assurance that the product meets a certain level of safety because of that economic self-interest the company has, but with vaccines that doesn't exist. And so, unfortunately, I know parents still to tell, I'm so busy, I can't research every product out there. Yeah, well, the truth is, you don't have to research every product out there in the same way, but with vaccines you do. You have to do your own homework, because the market is not going to correct to make them safer, nor are they going to be properly trialed beforehand because of the economic incentives the companies have.
Len Arcuri 5:16
Yep, and just that key point is something that is so important just to really focus on, because I know my own personal journey with my son. There's no question, I researched car seats extensively, lots of research, but when it came to the vaccine question, and my wife asked me to look into it, and I did. I went to the CDC, they had a definitive statement. My research was done, and if I would have understood the fact that the market forces that I was assuming are in place, like with car seats and other products, the fact that there is that immunity and that level of rigor is not available is something that was not something I fully understood at the time, and I think that's why you raising it as that key missing element is really important for people to understand that much more due diligence would be needed for them to get into a position to make a more informed decision. Right now, that's just not the case,
Aaron Siri 6:20
and I would say starting at the CDC and the FT websites are good places to start, but you don't, as long as you don't just read the conclusory statement at the top, look at the studies they cite, or the claim, right now, that's that's what I'm saying, it takes a little work, because you got to actually read them, but if you go to the typical CDC webpage about vaccines, and you, and you'll see the declaratory statement. And then go read the PubMed studies, or the IOM reviews that they cite to support the statement, and you can see for yourself if it supports it. You will find it typically does not support that statement. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite. Leave it at that.
Len Arcuri 7:03
It's true. Well, Dr. William Parker was on this show about a month ago, and he talked exactly about that concept, that in science many times that conclusion isn't really supported by if you read the whole study, it's not - there's an incongruence, and it's not very - it's not uncommon in science.
Aaron Siri 7:22
It's what you said, it's what you said, Len. It's supported by consensus. The science becomes what the consensus view is, and that is the most dangerous type of quote unquote science, because it's not driven by data, it's not driven by evidence, it's driven by dogma, repetition, and belief. And when that becomes entrenched and the quote unquote science comes beholden to it, they become very biased and blind to, and that's really why I think the CDC web pages end up the way they do, they're looking for any little tethered support their already pre a priori decisions, I mean just to bring this into something practical versus abstract. You hear all the time that vaccines, the most thoroughly studied product before they come to market, because they're going to be injected into millions of babies, right? That's what you're told, that's what you're led to believe, that's what you will read over and over again. Well, the simple way to test that is, go to the FDA website, and there's a page called the FDA licensed vaccine. It's literally one web page, and has every single licensed vaccine, and you can click in, and you could see the clinical trial allowed upon to license that product. Okay, there's a package insert that's for each one of them, and in section 6.1 as required by the federal regulations, they have to summarize what was the clinical trial relied upon to license that vaccine for purposes of safety. You can also then click further down and see the actual many instances underlying clinical trial documents themselves. If you don't want to just see the summary, do both, and what you'll find is that if you actually look at the trials, you will quickly realize these are not the most thoroughly studied products on the market before they come to tomorrow. I don't even know how anybody could say that who actually looks at the actual licensure documents, because it's plainly clear to lay people, you don't need to be a scientist, you don't need to have a degree in epidemiology or statistics or virology or vaccinology or pediatrics. You don't need any kind of degree. Okay, you don't need any education almost to understand that these clinical trials cannot possibly validate the safety of these products, because they often do not review safety for more than days or weeks, and you give them after injection doing the product to babies. So, on that basis alone, it's just common sense, you know. There's no way to know what effects it's going to have months, let alone years down the line, when the baby's finally grown up, and they finally would diagnose neurological immunological development. Mental issues that don't arise until later, for example, and a very product intended to modify the immune system that has all kinds of neurological implications. So, in any event, yeah, that's the discord you're talking about.
Len Arcuri 10:13
Yep. No, and it's real. And again, bringing this back to, from a parent's perspective, the key is having a desire to look and to understand more, and then actually doing it, and again, I know where I got tripped up is I didn't want more work, I didn't want to do digging, I wanted, I wanted to rely on the fact that other agencies, other institutions, you know, kind of had my back, but ultimately I look back on it as laziness on my part that I didn't do more diligence in something that was so critically important, and again, we all want to rely on institutions, but the reality is there's reasons why we should have our own healthy skepticism and to do our own research, regardless of what we hope might be true.
Aaron Siri 10:57
Now, I'm speaking more broadly, you said laziness, okay, but actually I think that it's a lot more than laziness for most folks, not laziness per se. You have very folks who are very diligent, can't you know, most parents are caring, they love their kids, not necessarily laziness. I will say what I find a lot of the reason a lot of the times is this: there's a self schema that people developed about themselves, right? I am X kind of person, right? So, for example, if I, if I even told you to, you know, the earth is flat, a lot of people just.. they won't even, which, by the way, you know, you can get in a high building and see the curvature by the ocean, but in any event, putting that aside, okay, putting that aside, you're like, no, even the notion of even entertaining that idea abuts with one's self schema, because that is the foil for I'm not a loon, I'm not crazy, right? And many times the foil for you, you know, your own self schema, that I'm a logical, science-driven, you know, data-driven person is.. I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I don't have issues with vaccines. Vaccines are safe and effective, and I'm gonna repeat that mantra till I die. Period. And they definitely, 100% do not cause the 100 or so commonly claimed injuries that these products are claimed to cause by parents. They don't cause those. Okay, double sending parents, because I'm a data-driven science person, that's your self-schema, and so even, even entertaining that these products could have one or more issues, right? Even looking at it, oftentimes people find that to be discordant with their self-schema, and have a little bit of this little reaction to it. I bet there are people listening to this, our discussion up to this point, and they're already having a visceral reaction. How dare you? You're going to kill people. How can you question these, you know, items given to Moses at Sinai? And that's the problem. People have emotional, they have beliefs about the products, they don't just treat them like products. And I assure everybody out there, they're just products made by for-profit publicly traded companies. The only real difference, unlike other products, is they have immunity liability, and, and, and, and have are not supported and promoted oftentimes by the companies, but varied by your own federal health authority, which I'm sure creates no conflict for them.
Len Arcuri 13:20
Right. Well, let's just go back to this example, right, where, and again, I didn't mean to convey that it was only laziness that was the result of me not, oh no, going deeper than going, but, but there was another element to it, and you hit it on the head, right? I didn't want to know that this was something I didn't want to know to be true, because I could even in my own head, subconsciously play out. I don't want to be that person. Going, you don't want, like, least from my standpoint, I didn't want to stand out. I didn't. I was hoping that this wasn't true. And so there's a lot that goes on in terms of what could keep a parent from again doing more digging, and sometimes it's inconvenient, sometimes it's uncomfortable, and so there's also that aspect that this is such a charged topic that I think in many cases there's probably many people like me who would just didn't want to know, because once you know, you, there's a lot of uncomfortable results of knowing something and doing something that cuts against the grain.
Aaron Siri 14:22
Yeah, so my firm's like over 100 folks, but half of them do vaccine-related work, and we do have a vaccine injury practice - about 20 folks now. They don't - we don't sue companies, we can't, but we - there's a little federal program paid out over $5 million in injury with a cap of 250 on pain and suffering, 250 on death can't be a discovery, right? It's got a lot of problems, but we try to get folks some compensation in this in this program. We fight against a little often called the DOJ. In any event, you know, it's funny people say to them all the time, well, the people who call your firm about vaccine injuries, they're just anti-vaxxer. Dollars, and I often say to them, I say, I can assure you the anti-vaxxers not calling my firm, and they're like, why not? Because they didn't get the vaccine. The folks who are calling this is the irony, right? It's those who end up with it, they do what they're told, they go get the products, they're they or their child get injured, and then they are labeled and discounted, and no, we don't listen to these people, because they are acts, they are the quote unquote anti-science, right? They're quacks, no, they're just parents trying to do the right thing, in fact, and the folks who actually research these products early and choose not to get them, they're obviously not calling our firm, and to your last, to your last point. Yeah, most people don't wake up one day and say, you know what, I want to do today. I want to take a socially ostracizing position that might get my kids out of school, meet their end of my job, potentially my kids excluded from playdates, call all kinds of pejoratives, have the news media, you know, talk about how we shouldn't be treated in emergency rooms. Yeah, that's what I want to do today. No, most people do not make this decision lightly, and I find they've often - they, or somebody they know, has had a very direct experience by these products, but I often find that alone is not enough. It's usually that coupled with they then did their own research, they did their own homework, they looked at what were the trials allowed upon to license these products. What does the post-licensure safety literature look like? And not because they're just doing as an experiment, it's because there is a specific issue that arises. So they want to dig down. If you want to figure out whether or not a vaccine causes a certain injury, the first thing you want to look at is a clinical trial, because that's a prospective study that's supposed to be placebo controlled, where you're comparing those who didn't get it to those who didn't, you're looking at the outcomes. It's only through those types of trials, these prospective trials, clinical trials, that you can actually determine causation, typically. So that's where you want to start. Those are useless once you actually look at them to determine safety, and it also buzzed with, like, wait a second, I thought these most, because with drugs, it's multi-year placebo control trials with vaccines, it's like days or weeks they drew with, and not a single, not a single injected routine childhood vaccine was ever licensed based on a placebo-controlled trial, nor was any vaccine used as a control license based on a placebo-to trial by which, which they could have used another vaccine if that vaccine was properly licensed, to be clear, but if you go down the chain, that's not true for any of them, and I get fact-checked on that all the time. That's because they just talk to the consensus talking heads, versus look at the FDA documents that I've been litigating around for 10 years, which are all lay out in chapter 10 of my book. You can see every single FDA source yourself, or you can go to ICANN decide.org website, there's a great chart there, no placebo chart that has everything, it's all sized sourced to FDA sources, all hyperlinked, all clickable. In any event, I think that it's that exercise is what then tips parents often into going, whoa, there's a problem here, because not only do I see certain issues with the products, but you, quote unquote, public health authorities have not been honest with me.
Len Arcuri 18:06
Yep, and everything you touched on, so many different topics just now. I just want to reiterate, overall, because we won't be able to go hit each one of them, and what's in your book, right? It's not that this is your opinion on what you think, I mean, everything in your book is this is what's actually the case, right? In terms of what research or lack of research, what conclusions were done, what that was based on. So it's a very informative read, really well put together. And again, I think there's a lot of things that you just said that most people would say, can that really be true? And reality is it is. So I guess, moving to, you know, kind of what's the action for parents, right? Whether it's, it's not necessarily vaccinated or not, it's about what does a parent maybe, what does a parent need to make an informed choice, in this case, informed consent, you know, whether it's this issue or anything else, it's all about decision making by the parent, and at least from my standpoint I just want access to information, so I can make the right choice for my family, and I know back when my son was born in 2006 I don't feel like I had access to the right information to with my wife, Cass, to make an informed choice, and I feel like, especially since RFK Junior's been in HJ, a lot of, a lot of positive things are happening, but I think parents still don't have what they need to make an informed choice.
Aaron Siri 19:29
Since you brought up my book, I'll start there, and then I'll broaden out in terms of informed choices. So, if anybody does read my book as a way to get an introduction to the topic, you will find that every single claim, every sentence, almost has a footnote to it, where that has a claim in it, and that footnote has a hyperlink, and when a permalink is available, because they don't let you permalink everything, there's a permalink there, so it'll never go away, and most of those sources are government sources, journals, and so forth, the very type of thing we quote unquote. Mainstream tells you to rely upon right, and so to your point, I'm, you know, I get, I get, I get lamp harpooned with this all along. You're not a doctor, you don't have an MD, you don't have a PhD, you don't have MPH, that's true. I don't have any of those things, I'm just a lawyer, 100% I completely agree, but the difference is that that means I really can't say something, I can't just say trust me, I'm a doctor. When I go to court about vaccines, we've done hundreds of lawsuits around vaccines, federal suing federal federal health agencies, state health agencies going down the list of deposed numerous vaccinologists, immunologists, infectious disease pediatricians, when I go into those depositions, when I do, when I go into federal courtrooms, state courtrooms, I can't just say stuff about vaccines, I actually have to prove them, and that's a big part of why I ended up looking at all of this stuff and digging down and doing freedom of information out requests, including a lot of it on behalf of the Information Action Network, ICANN, a nonprofit that supports a lot of the vaccine policy work that my firm does, but we FOIA the FDA, because this, even what's on their website, seems incredible. How can it be you licensed, you know, a Hep B vaccine for newborns based on a clinical trial that had 147 kids, five days of safety monitoring after injection, no control group, that's literally the clinical trial, a lot of unto license, one of the two have B vaccines, the other one had four days of safety monitoring after injections. Okay, that's Endrex B, the first one to come back to HP. That seems crazy. So we foided the FDA, we got the underlying clinical trial documents, we've gone, we've jumped through every who possible to see what else there is, not only to prove that they didn't properly do safety, but when folks call us and say, hey, my baby, you know, got this injection and went into a grand mal seizure within four minutes, a bubble had this cascade, we have to go to vaccine court against the federal government. We need this data, we want, we need to, we want good clinical trial data, we don't have it, and so and so, that experience over 10 years is where you know when I started this, I probably held the same orthodox use that most people do. I don't know everybody with that, with Adams, if you ask me, I don't know. And then over 10 years, what I have found is unfortunately, there is what the public health authorities tell you, and then there is what the data, the actual evidence reflects will millions of people actually die in America without vaccines as they claim, or is it really just hundreds or dozens? Which one of those truths is real, and really is the is a benefit for maybe even upside down. What does the actual data reveal? They'll say to all the data settled, right? We know what it is, really. Have you ever looked? Well, I looked, and you can read all about in chapter seven, right, and go through it, and you can check every source, and you could see for yourself. In any event, with that said, you said the words informed consent. How do you get informed consent, right? On the informed bit, the reality is, is that that's up to each parent. If you're a parent that wants to walk into pediatric office and just say, "Look, doc, stop, I don't want to know anything, jab them up. Well, that's informed to the degree that that parent wanted, and that's informed right. And then they consented.
Aaron Siri 23:16
If you're a parent that wants you to know before you buy the car to see the crash test report. Then that's a different level, right? You want to understand the safety profile, and you know that requires getting a bigger picture. Need to read my book. You can also just go to I Can decide.org There's a section called Get Informed. It's all free resources, it's excellent. There's a two pager, there's a 10 pager, there's a 50 pager, depends on how informed you want to become. And when then you go to the pediatric office, you can ask some basic questions. In fact, I implore folks to take a look at some of the primary sources and bring them with you. Ask your pediatrician questions about them, like what was relied upon to license this. Was this issue actually studied? Now you'll have in your hand the actual proof of what the answer is, and then see what the pediatrician tells you. I've deposed many pediatricians. I could tell you they're well-meaning people. I have no reason to doubt that, but they don't know anything about these products, for the most part. In fact, most depositions I have of pediatricians are the pretty - it's good they remain private, because they're pretty embarrassing. It's again, it's not because they're bad people, that's just not their job. They don't study vaccines, they don't look any under the hood. A lot of times, even though they've literally written scripts, and then, because they don't inject them typically, the nurse does, right? They've written scripts to inject them, 10s of 1000s of them, over their career. I've, I've had ones who literally can't tell you what the contraindications are by the CDC for these products, even though they've administered it to 1000s of kids, they don't know, and it's not. Like the contraindication list is long, by the way, only a few items on them, right? I even had, like, you know, for example, the Hep B vaccine. One of the conjuncticians is if you're allergic to yeast, why? Because yeast is in the vial. I had a pediatrician tell me in a deposition that that is a conspiracy theory, that there's yeast in Hep B vaccine. And then I pulled out the contraindication. You could see it, and just like this guy was a pediatrician for almost 40 years, 40 years administered 1000s of these things, had no idea. So, in any event, what do parents need to do? Get informed, they need to, like I said, the very beginning of this, you got to do your homework with these products, because the market's not going to correct, and then on the consent part, and to me that's actually the more important part than the informed part, because you know, and being informed is to the degree to which you have the ability and your capacity and the time and the inclination, and you get what you want, but then the decision is, do you want to or do not, and you could say no, I don't consent, but at that point, and that's where I focus my work, is on the consent part, because if I say to the pediatrician, you know what, you can give them these three, but I don't want this fourth one, I don't want this particular product, the pediatrician goes, no problem, you don't want to consent, no problem, but now your kids can't go to school and can't get a job, and blah blah blah. Well, then that's not really consent. When you have then been put on punitive measures for refusing consent, that destroys consent. That doesn't mean that's not free will consent. That is, and so you know that's where that impact on civil and individual rights is where I do most of my work, when it comes to vaccine policy related work, which is, look, if you want to get a vaccine, it's America, that's freedom, get as many as you want, I support your right to do it, but if you don't want them, you should be free to decline them without penny, penalty, or persecution,
Len Arcuri 26:56
super, super clear, and again, that consent port piece is so important, but even before getting there, as a parent, you had talked about the big difference between science and belief, and again, I just want to underscore what you were saying about pediatricians. Parents may walk in with a false belief that the pediatrician does understand much more than perhaps they do, so that's where, as a parent, we have to kind of drop our own beliefs about what we think might be happening, and again, just really do our own homework, and when you're asking those questions, can you comment a little bit more about this, the concept of belief, because I think that's what you really talked at length about in your presentation, in your book, that these beliefs are being shared by by these institutions and present, and it's presented as if it's scientific, but it really is just the narrative that people have kind of agreed to. So, can you just talk about the distinction between those terms a little bit more?
Aaron Siri 27:59
Sure, and given the name of your podcast, I'll use autism as the example, because I think it's an apt example for this exact point. So, I'm sure everybody out there has heard, probably God knows many times in their life, that vaccines do not cause autism, and that is expressed as a scientific statement, as a statement of evidence as a conclusion by authoritative scientific source, you know, institutions and sources, right. Okay, and when you walk into a typical pediatric office and you bring up autism, that's what you'll hear: vaccines do not cause autism. It has been thoroughly and utterly and completely debunked, right. Well, the reality is, is that the statement vaccines do not cause autism is not a scientific claim, it is a belief, it's a mantra, it's almost like a religious incantation. And the reason I say that is not to be pejorative or hyperbolic or whatever in any way, it's because in the decades long quest that our firm has undertaken on behalf of ICANN and other in the Information Action Network, particular to actually identify the studies to support that claim. All we could find are studies which effectively support it to some degree, and those have something called healthy user bias in them, for MMR vaccine, which is not given until at least the first year of life, typically first birthday or afterwards, and for one particular ingredient that's not in any vaccine for almost two decades, for the most part, and so when you survey parents of children who have autistic children, and you ask them, what do you believe caused your child's autism? Those studies reflect the 40 to 70% depending on the survey, of parent of those parents say that vaccines they believe is a contributor to the cause in their child's autism. Then, when you ask them, well, which vaccines. Do they, they point to the vaccines given in the first six months of life, that's DTAP, Hib, IPV, Hep B, and PCV, each injected three times each, so those 15 shots given in the first six months of life is what they point to, and they also point to the MMR vaccine given on or after the first birthday. Okay, so when the CDC claims that vaccines do not cause autism, you would assume they have the studies that reflect that none of those vaccines cause autism. So, unfortunately, the reality is, is that we in the Institute of Medicine, has conducted a review, for example, with regards to pertussis vaccine and autism. Could not find any studies supporting that pertussis vaccine does not cause autism. The Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ) did this review in 2014 and they also reviewed in Hep B vaccine and autism. They couldn't find any that does not call the support that those epi vaccine or DTAP, each given three times each in first-year-old life, do not cause alt, and in fact there was only one study found for each of those products, and they actually found an association between those products and autism. For example, the Hep B study out of the University of Stony Brook by Gallagher and Goodman, you could look this up in PubMed, if you want. Found that the children that got the Hep B vaccine in first month of life versus those that didn't had three times the rate of autism. That is the only published study I'm aware of with regards to Hep B vaccine autism. It's the only one now. It's a retrospective epidemiological study, so of course, those confounders, they all do. That's what retrospective epi studies have, and you can criticize them, but when your weight of your evidence is one study shows cause autism, and you have zero that associative association, zero. Well, that's your state of your science, and you may not like that reality, HCDC, but that's your reality. Well, so that was, you know, those HR two and IOM. Then, on behalf of ICANN, we actually FOIA, that's the Freedom of Information Act, that's the federal law that allows us to get documents from federal health agencies, because they work for us, even though they forget that they take our tax money. We asked them for the studies that they rely upon to support that DTAP doesn't result, those five vaccines given three times each in the first sequence of life.
Aaron Siri 32:30
They didn't give us any studies, so then in 2020 we sued them in federal court, and days before the initial conference, we finally got a list of 20 studies. Well, great. All right, when their back was against the wall in a federal lawsuit, finally the CDC produced the list. Well, we, well, we got the list, and we looked at the studies because they're words and we have eyes and we can read. And I called up the Department of Justice attorney representing the CDC, and I said to him, I said, 'Look, got your list of 20 studies. I said, 'Is this your final list? 'Yes. I said, 'Are you sure you want to settle this case on the basis of this? Because 19 of these have nothing to do with the vaccines given the first six months of life. They have to do with either MMR or an ingredient that's not in these vaccines. I said, 'So none of these are relevant to this lawsuit. The last one was that an IOM report from 2012 that did look at pertussis vaccine and autism, and as I mentioned earlier, could not find any study that showed it doesn't cause autism, and found one study that showed there was an association between Tdap vaccine and autism, but the IOM threw it out, because it didn't have an unvaccinated control group. In any event, the CDC, the excuse me, the DOJ attorney said, no, came back to me and said, yep, that's that's what we want, CDC wants to resolve on, because that's all they had. Well, they can't make up studies they don't have. That's what happens when you're actually in a federal lawsuit, right? You get the truth. We ended up signing a stipulation. The DOJ signed it. I'm having the CDC. I signed it to have ICANN. Federal judge in the Southern District of New York entered its of the order of the court. And there you have it. It's on the ICANN website. If you want to see what the CDC said, were the studies were a lot of mental that to claim that the vaccines given the first experience of life do not cause autism. It's on the ICANN website in a federal court stipulated order, and what's clear from that list is they don't have any studies to support that those vaccines do not cause autism. I also then had further opportunities to depose other experts in this area, same outcome every single time, and in fact, as some folks are out there may already know, the CDC website has now finally been updated to tell the truth. It basically says, actually, sorry, we lied to you, the claim that vaccines are not cause autism is not an evidence-based claim. We made it without the studies or the data to support it. It actually finally now says that. Um, but the AAP still says it, the AMA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, still says it, the American Medical Association still says it, every pediatric office still says that. I'm certain, for the most part, unless they're actually studying the products and actually understand pediatricians that actually understand these products get a very different experience. They often, they're actually stopped giving vaccines, that's a separate story, and so that is what you're, you know, it's using. So I'm just using autism as an example. I'm not even, I'm not even getting into the science that reflects vaccines' connection to autism and how it could cause autism, and so forth. I'm not even touching that. I'm just touching on their claim that vaccines do not cause autism, and, and I, you know, and that, that it really is a belief, it is not a science data driven claim, it's in fact the opposite, and it's believed through repetition and dogma, exactly where we started, and I think answers your question, I chapter 11 of my book, I go through that entire history year by year with regards to the claim of vaccines and autism. What the evidence actually shows.
Len Arcuri 36:08
Great, and I appreciate you giving that overview. And again, there's a lot of intricacies here, but it's a monumental thing that the CDC did change what's on the website? I mean, I think it's just incredible that that's actually, you don't see usually kind of people admitting that something that they had before wasn't grounded in science. So it's phenomenal that it's there. If going back in my case, I would have seen that when I was looking to do research for my son, okay, that would have given me the ability to investigate further, and to again to dig deeper, but it's crazy that now that's on the CDC site, which is definitely a positive, but as you said, all these other organizations are ignoring it, and they're still holding not to their science but to this belief that's being presented as if it's scientific fact.
Aaron Siri 37:02
Well, vaccinology is based on belief, it is their quote unquote science. The only thing is that the reason I call it a religion is because in most religions, you know you're in a religion, right? You know you're, you're, you're engaged in a leap of faith to answer the unanswerables, right? Where do we go when we die, and all that? You know you're engaged in a leap of faith. These folks think they're engaged in quote unquote science, but in fact they're engaged in a religion. They repeat these statements over and over again, and they're certain somebody's got the proof. Somebody can prove it somewhere. There's an angel somewhere. There's a, you know, who can, who can assert it. You know, I'll tell you. I'll tell you one funny story on that point, okay, so in this quest to get the studies that show vaccines don't cause autism, I had occasion when, during this, was during Trump won, the Trump formed a vaccine safety commission, and along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. invited me to go with him, and with just a few of us to go down to NIH, and on one side of the table was now Secretary Kennedy, then you know, mr. Kennedy, and a few of us on the other side of the table was Francis Collins, the head of NIH, Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy, Infectious Disease, right folks, I think know he is today, and a bunch of other heads of institutes. Okay, and during that meeting, the head of the National Institute of Mental Health, Joshua Gordon. Okay, who's also at the time was the head of the Interagency Coordinating Committee for Autism at the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. You know, two hour heated exchange, blah blah blah about vaccines and trials, and it was fascinating meeting. meeting where Fauci got pretty worked up one point, but that story for another time. In any event, Joshua Gordon says, he goes, he says, but at least you have to admit vaccines don't cause autism, right? He just says that, and I said something to him, like I said, but, but I said, Dr. Gordon, I said you can't say that without studies that actually reflect that the vaccines don't cause autism, and he said, "Oh, that's been thoroughly studied. Here it is, the man who's the head of the National Institute of Mental Health, who's the head of the Interagency Committee on Autism, right, who, who, who is responsible essentially for coordinating all autism research across our entire federal government, is saying to me, "Fit has been studied, and he has me right there at the table at the NIH for my email address. I give it to him, and he sends me this review, this meta review of 10 autism vaccine studies. Now, the title of it, of the study, and clearly to me he had not read past the title, because it reflects unvaccinated, right, as the, as what they were comparing, vaccinated, unvaccinated. Problem is, when you look at the actual 10 studies, that's not true. Almost all of them are comparing kids that got like 26 shots with 25 shots, meaning they got all the vaccines. Without MMR, all the vaccines with MMR, of course, the kids already got injured by a DTab vaccine the first six months of life, are they likely to get the MMR? No, that's something called healthy user bias. It's the healthiest kids that go on to get the MMR vaccine, a coin term by the CDC, not me. Okay, so all of the few studies in there. So I sent them an email, I said, Dr. Gordon, I appreciated meeting with you. Thank you very much. Send me the study. Unfortunately, it does not have in it what you said it had. It does not have anything in here that actually show that DTAP doesn't cause autism given three to two at two four and six months of age. That HIV doesn't call autism given a 246 months of age. Hep B doesn't go bautism given a 246 months of age, Hib PCV doesn't show it right, and so you know what he did. He finally wrote me back, and he said, I think the information you're seeking is best obtained from the CDC.
Aaron Siri 40:53
Okay, so I added onto the chain the folks who are assigned from the CDC to his autism committee to the interagency committee, and I said, "Hey, Dr. Gordon says you guys have the studies to show that these vaccines don't cause autism, so Maddie, you guys sit the chain. Okay, get no response from them. Then I finally get a response from the CDC office of the Secretariat, in which they just sent me one sentence, cut everybody else off the chain, and they say the studies you're looking for are in this link, which is the link to the CDC vaccines and autism page, which I mean, of course, I've looked at that a million times, obviously, I'd read that, I mean, I've looked at every single thing cited in that page, this is what I go back to what I said earlier. So I wrote back, and I said, Dr. Gordon, I got this link below. I forwarded him the thing. I kept them all in the chain. I said, Listen, for guys, I'm asking for a simple thing here. You say vaccines on cause autism. You're literally the head of the National Institute of Mental Health. You're the head of the Interagency Committee on Autism. You now have the CDC folks on this chain who are responsible for this. You have not provided me with any studies. Give me the actual studies, not a CDC webpage that doesn't have any studies in it. Give me an actual studies that support this. That's how you're supposed to do science, right? He never gives it to me. He never sends me anything. I never get anything from him. And I even sent him a quote from a congressman, Dave Weldon, who I believe it was Dave Weldon who had this quote, and it's in my email chain, and it's in my book. You can see the quote, it's in my book, because I sent my quote, and in it this congressman is saying, 'Hey, look, I went to the CDC for an answer to this vaccine question. They sent me to the FDA. The FDA sent me to NIH. The NIH sent me to the CDC. The CDC said, and he's like, I went in circles forever, and the Congressman never got an answer to his question either. And this is what I've, you know, goes back to your last point, which is it's just a belief they believe somebody out there's got the proof, the evidence, but it's not there. And after 10 years of litigating this, I can't find it. Would love to have it, and that's what I've basically what I wrote my book to do. The whole book is about what they tell you versus what 10 years of battling to try and get the evidence actually shows where we are. That's not to say that vaccines have no value, to be very clear for anybody listening. Measles vaccine, for example, can stop transmission of measles. Okay, it can stop transmission of measles, which means it could prevent somebody from getting a case of measles, which means it can prevent somebody from getting the harm that measles can cause. Okay, but that's where folks want to stop. And then they want to go put their fingers in their ears and never listen to another word, but that's not where the story or the data or the evidence ends, unfortunately. And whether or not, as a society, the benefits outweigh the risk requires being objective, and it requires being empirical and sitting back and looking at all the evidence, not just that one data point that just told you.
Len Arcuri 43:56
Absolutely, no. I, there's so much that you touched on. Again, we can go in so many different tangents, but I appreciate you sharing all this, and I know for many of our listeners they're going to be quite familiar with this, and others that may be the first time hearing it, and your book is phenomenal in the sense that it's what RFK Jr. talks about all the time, right, with a key thing for a parent is critical thinking, right, it's really taking the time, so digesting what's in your book, in terms of the information, the factual information is an incredibly powerful step if you want to get into a place of being better informed to be able to make better decisions, and again, I think just you personally, you've had such tenacity in this, and doing really like seeking the truth and helping parents to have more information to be able to make these decisions, so I just want to express personal gratitude for what you've done as part of this overall movement. Lot of things are moving in the right direction, and, and I know there's so much more to do.
Aaron Siri 44:55
Well, thank you for what, for what you do. Obviously, nobody would get. Informed at all, if there weren't folks who stepped out and went, you know, cut against the public grain to do what you're doing in terms of broadcasting this information. So, thank you,
Len Arcuri 45:12
thank you. And again, everyone in the show notes will include the information about Aaron's book, as well as I can, which is just a dynamite organization, and and again, just so grateful there's people like you out there trying to help get to the truth, and again, thank you for taking the time today. Your child needs you running on all cylinders now, and the fastest way to rise is with personalized one on one support. Get started today. Go to elevatehowyounavigate.com
