WHO’s 2025 Autism–Vaccine Report Ignores Key Evidence, Raising Eyebrows Worldwide

A review that ignores the vast majority of evidence isn’t a review—it’s a narrative.

This article originally appeared on Focal Points and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Today, the World Health Organization released its report, Vaccines, Thimerosal, and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence Review 2010–2025. Predictably, the WHO repeats the same pre-scripted conclusion it has delivered for two decades: that childhood vaccines pose no risk for autism.

But when this new WHO document is compared to the McCullough Foundation’s Determinants of Autism Spectrum Disorder—a rigorous, comprehensive synthesis of 308 studies across epidemiology, mechanistic biology, toxicology, environmental exposures, and clinical patterns—it becomes unmistakably clear that the WHO has reached its conclusion not by disproving anything, but by refusing to examine the majority of the evidence that actually matters.

Scope of Evidence: WHO’s 36 Studies vs. 308 Studies in the McCullough Foundation Report

The WHO bases its entire global position on just 36 studies—17 on thimerosal and nineteen on various vaccines. This tiny slice of the literature is treated as though it represents the full scientific record.

The McCullough Foundation report evaluates 308 studies, including 136 vaccine-related studies examining exposure patterns, toxicology, timing, adjuvant effects, cumulative dose, and immunological mechanisms.

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This contrast is not merely quantitative. It represents two opposite approaches to evidence:

• The WHO narrows the evidence until no safety signal can be detected.

• The McCullough Foundation broadens the evidence to include all domains relevant to causation.

As a result, each review inhabits an entirely different scientific universe.

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WHO’s Eligibility Criteria Exclude the Exact Categories Needed to Detect Causation

The WHO report’s conclusion is baked into its methodology. It systematically filters out the types of evidence that reveal biological harm, including:

• mechanistic and biological studies

• aluminum-adjuvant and toxicology research

• mitochondrial, oxidative stress, and neuroimmune pathways

• animal models

• case reports and case series

• ecological analyses

• and most importantly: all vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated research

By excluding these domains, the WHO guarantees that no mechanistic pathway, no biological plausibility, and no clinical reality can enter the conversation.

The McCullough Foundation report, by contrast, centers these mechanisms, demonstrating how genetic susceptibility, immune dysregulation, toxicant exposure, and clustered vaccine doses can converge during vulnerable neurodevelopmental windows.

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Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Evidence: WHO Includes Zero — Our Report Includes All 12 Studies

Perhaps the most revealing omission is this:

The WHO did not include a single vaccinated–versus–completely unvaccinated study.

This is not because these studies lack rigor or relevance. It is because the WHO’s criteria intentionally exclude them.

Meanwhile, the McCullough Foundation report includes all 12 vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated studies, which collectively show unvaccinated children are consistently healthier across every domain with lower rates of:

• autism

• ADHD

• learning disabilities

• asthma

• allergic disease

• chronic illness

• gastrointestinal disorders

• neurodevelopmental delays

The WHO removes the only datasets capable of showing what happens when children receive no vaccines at all.

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Evidence Weighting: WHO Elevates Null Findings and Buries Positive Signals

Even within its small evidence pool, the WHO’s grading system is structurally biased.

• Studies showing no association—often relying on administrative codes or near-universal vaccination—receive “moderate” or “strong” certainty ratings.

• Studies showing any positive association—even large, well-designed ones—are automatically downgraded to “very low” certainty with “high risk of bias.”

This creates a self-fulfilling framework where null studies are treated as definitive and positive studies are treated as flawed—even if the methods are better.

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The WHO Ignores Two Pillars of Autism Science: Cumulative Dosing and Regression

The WHO report overlooks two of the most important phenomena in vaccine-autism research:

Cumulative Vaccine Exposure

The WHO evaluates individual vaccines in isolation. It does not examine:

• the cumulative pediatric schedule

• its rapid expansion

• clustered early-life dosing

• combined adjuvant loads

• or how these exposures align with critical neurodevelopmental periods

Developmental Regression

The WHO completely ignores regression—a central defining feature of vaccine-induced ASD and a phenomenon repeatedly temporally associated with periods of intense vaccination.

The McCullough Foundation report, by contrast, treats cumulative exposure and regression as essential, documenting decades of clinical patterns that the WHO simply chooses not to acknowledge.

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Conclusion

The WHO’s 2025 review is not a comprehensive autism assessment. It is a tightly restricted statistical exercise, intentionally engineered to prevent detection of vaccine-related risk by excluding the exact forms of evidence that reveal it. This is no surprise given that the Gates Foundation and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance are among the top 3 financial contributors to the WHO:

The McCullough Foundation’s 308-study report is a truly comprehensive ASD evidence synthesis, integrating epidemiology, biology, toxicology, environmental science, mechanistic plausibility, and—critically—the full vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated research record.

Thus, we believe our conclusion stands as the most accurate to date:

Combination and early-timed routine childhood vaccination constitutes the most significant modifiable risk factor for ASD, supported by convergent mechanistic, clinical, and epidemiologic findings, and characterized by intensified use, the clustering of multiple doses during critical neurodevelopmental windows, and the lack of research on the cumulative safety of the full pediatric schedule.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

www.mcculloughfnd.org

Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.

Copyright 2025 Focal Points

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