In an email obtained by ICAN, through a FOIA requested submitted by its attorneys, a CDC Senior Scientist in the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office (ISO) calls the Director of that office a “pathetic liar.”
ICAN submitted a FOIA request to the CDC for all communications between Dr. William Thompson (CDC Senior Scientist) and Dr. Frank DeStefano (CDC Director of the ISO) dated on or after January 2018. In response, ICAN received an email that reflects how tense and hostile things got behind the scenes from the fallout of a whistleblower confession.
On August 27, 2014, Dr. Thompson, provided a statement through his attorney that the CDC “omitted statistically significant information” showing an association between the MMR vaccine and autism in the first and only MMR-autism study ever conducted by the CDC with American children. Dr. Thompson, in a recorded phone call, stated the following regarding concealing this association: “Oh my God, I can’t believe we did what we did. But we did. It’s all there. It’s all there. I have handwritten notes.” Dr. Thompson further stated on that call:
I have great shame now when I meet families with kids with autism because I have been part of the problem … the CDC is so paralyzed right now by anything related to autism. They’re not doing what they should be doing because they’re afraid to look for things that might be associated. So anyway there’s still a lot of shame with that. … I am completely ashamed of what I did.
This means that with regard to the MMR vaccine, which is the only vaccine actually studied by the CDC with regard to autism, it appears the CDC may have concealed an association between that vaccine and autism.
CDC Director Dr. DeStefano is an author of the MMR-autism study that Dr. Thompson says was fraudulent. As you can imagine, this caused Dr. DeStefano some serious consternation. After Dr. DeStefano denied the foregoing, Dr. Thompson apparently responded that he was a “pathetic liar.” Nonpartisan and acclaimed reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, has written a great article delving into this issue further and highlighting this email obtained by ICAN.
