Correcting this week’s misinformation: week of July 9 2026

Some anti-vaccine activists often say they did not know any autistic people when they were growing up. Then they claim that more children are autistic today because children get more vaccines now.

It’s true that 40 years ago, you didn’t see kids with autism in the schools. That’s not because there were no kids with autism. But because most were hidden away.

At that time, autism was not understood the way it is today. Doctors usually only diagnosed children who needed the most help. Many children with autism were missed.

Also, before a law called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, many children with disabilities were not included in public schools. Only about 1 out of 5 children with disabilities went to public school. Many others were taught in separate places, kept at home, or sent to institutions.

So when people say they did not see children with autism in school years ago, that is often because those children were left out, not because they were not there.

Importantly, vaccines do not cause autism. Studies show that autism is mostly caused by genetics and starts very early, even before a baby is born. The brain differences seen in people with autism begin during early development in the womb, not because of vaccines or anything that happens later.

Peter McCullough’s group is pointing to several studies that they say show 17 different ways COVID vaccines could cause cancer.

The study mentioned in the video says there may be a link between cancer and the COVID vaccine. It was a study from South Korea that looked back at health records. The study seemed to suggest that people who did not get a COVID vaccine had a lower cancer risk than people who did get vaccinated.

But there are some big problems with that idea.

One problem is that the study looked back at records instead of carefully following people from the start. This kind of study can miss important differences between groups. For example, people who get vaccinated may be more likely to trust doctors and go to medical checkups. That means they may be more likely to find cancer earlier than people who do not go to the doctor as often.

The graphs in the study also raise questions. In one graph, cancer diagnoses start at zero on the first day of the study. Then the lines for vaccinated and unvaccinated people begin to separate almost right away. If the vaccine were causing cancer, that would suggest the vaccine could cause cancer almost immediately. That does not make sense. A more likely explanation is that vaccinated people were seeing doctors more often, so more cancers were being found.

Peter McCullough’s group also suggests several ways they think COVID vaccines could cause cancer. We have already explained why many of these claims are not supported by good evidence.

One example is the claim about “SV40 DNA sequences.” Many years ago, some early polio vaccines were accidentally contaminated with SV40, a virus found in monkeys. This happened because the process used to kill the polio virus did not fully kill SV40. But large studies later followed people who got those vaccines. Those studies did not find higher cancer rates in those people.

Today, scientists sometimes use a tiny piece of SV40 DNA in labs. This piece is called a promoter. A promoter is like an “on switch” that helps cells make proteins. It is not the part of SV40 linked to tumors.

In making some mRNA vaccines, this tiny “on switch” may be used during manufacturing. But almost all of it is removed before the vaccine is finished. It is not considered an ingredient in the final shot.

The evidence does not show that COVID vaccines cause cancer. In fact, some studies suggest that mRNA technology may help the immune system find and fight cancer cells. Scientists are also studying whether mRNA technology could help treat cancer in the future.

A woman joined a lawsuit against the AAP. She said her 18-month-old twins died because of three vaccines they got. Now, she has been charged with murder.

Many studies have looked at vaccines and SIDS. SIDS stands for sudden infant death syndrome. It is when a baby dies suddenly, and doctors cannot find a clear cause, even after an investigation.

The evidence does not show that vaccines cause SIDS. Some studies found no change in SIDS risk after babies got vaccines. Other studies found that babies who got vaccines had a lower risk of SIDS.

Experts do not say vaccines prevent SIDS. That is because families who vaccinate on time may also be more likely to do other things that lower the risk, like putting babies to sleep on their backs. But the evidence does not show that vaccines raise the risk of SIDS.

We also should not guess what caused these children’s deaths. There may be a trial, and more facts may come out later.

What we do know is that the children died on May 1, 2025. Just three weeks later, their parents were interviewed by Children’s Health Defense, RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine group. In that interview, they claimed vaccines caused the deaths, even though there was no medical evidence proving that.