Tell NIH to Stop Ignoring Vaccines’ Causal Link to Autism

Children’s Health Defense is calling on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to broaden its research into the relationship between vaccines and the development of autism in America’s children.

In September 2025, the NIH launched the Autism Data Science Initiative (ADSI), committing $50 million in taxpayer funding to find the causes of autism.

However, not a single one of ADSI’s principal investigators (PI) is looking into vaccines, the most likely driver of the autism epidemic.

Not only are these scientists not looking into it, but three of the ADSI’s PIs (Wendy Chung, Daniel Geschwind, and Jonathan Sebat) have devoted their careers to ensuring that vaccines will never be looked at as causative for autism, labelling vaccine/autism research “misinformation” and “fear” and calling the vaccine/autism hypothesis “fraudulent.”

We need to tell the NIH to take the following three steps:

• Remove the ideological gatekeepers: Chung, Geschwind, and Sebat must be removed from leadership positions in federally funded autism etiology research. Their public record demonstrates active hostility to the very hypothesis the CDC now acknowledges has not been ruled out.
• Expand the ASDI parameters: The initiative must explicitly investigate vaccine components, adjuvants including aluminum, and immunization schedule variables.
• Establish independent oversight: The analysis of raw biological samples and cohort data must be conducted by teams not institutionally or financially bound to the existing consensus.

The relationship between vaccines and the development of autism in America’s children is the elephant in the room that’s been stuck there for decades.

Contact the NIH today to let the agency know you want your tax dollars directed towards meaningful research and investigations into the vaccine/autism link on behalf of our nation’s children.

Submit your comment HERE (sample letter provided). 

Thank you for standing in defense of children’s health.

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