The paradox of autism causation studies is that we already know beyond a reasonable doubt what’s causing autism but mainstream science will never “know” in the conventional way because of economic and political factors surrounding the autism epidemic.

Let’s start with the first half of that sentence:

I. We already know

Eyewitness testimony is foundational to our criminal justice system and relied upon by judges and juries every day to administer justice. In Neil v. Biggers (1972) the U.S. Supreme Court outlined five factors for evaluating reliability of eyewitness testimony: opportunity to view, degree of attention, accuracy of description, level of certainty, and time between crime and identification. That testimony can then be corroborated by documentary evidence and additional witnesses. …

II. Mainstream science will likely never “know” in the conventional way what causes autism

Any honest philosopher of science will tell you that establishing causation is a thorny epistemological problem. Many fine books are written on the problem of causation and the deeper you go, the less you know. We live in a universe with an infinite number of variables. One cannot control for them all so there is always the possibility of confounding. Quantum mechanics establishes (for now) that uncertainty is built into the fabric of the universe. In physics the “laws” thought to govern large objects do not align with the “laws” thought to govern subatomic particles so there is clearly something that we’re missing in our understanding of the properties of matter. And then even if one could figure out all that, we might still be missing additional dimensions of reality that we cannot see or measure.

Given that unsolvable epistemological problem, but also with the need to proceed with our lives nonetheless, scientists have developed proxy measures that get us somewhat closer to establishing our best guess at causation (even though we will never be 100% certain). …

III. The conundrum

All of the data we have on autism are flawed. The mainstream vaccine studies don’t have a control group. The gene studies are based entirely on spurious correlation. The mainstream environmental studies fail to control for vaccines lest the researchers get blacklisted. And the alternative studies are small and underpowered. Nearly every study published since the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act has a financial conflict of interest. Quite literally we have conflicted, poorly-designed studies from the trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry vs. testimony from moms and dads and alternative studies funded by a parents of vaccine injured children.

Those are the data we have to solve an epidemic so large and expensive that it will cause the collapse of the developed world in our lifetime. And the data will not get any better in our lifetime either because the pharmaceutical industry and the autism industry are so large, rich, and powerful that they can prevent any new research from being conducted (and if it is somehow conducted they can find ways to kill the study as they did with the National Children’s Study or manipulate the analysis or block the release of the findings).

But the reason I bring all of this up is that this realization sets us free. There’s a particular moment in soccer, often late in the game on a counterattack, when a striker has to make a split-second decision to press the attack or wait for additional midfielders to join the play. A teammate who has a better view of the playing field will sometimes yell out, “What you see!” It conveys a lot of information with just three words. It means that no additional help is coming and the best opportunity you have is to make the play with what you see in front of you. I think that’s what we have to do with autism as well.

We know what’s causing autism. We should not wait for a double blind RCT because a double blind RCT is never coming given the political economy of autism. Instead we should trust each other in community against the predatory forces of global monopoly capitalism that are trying to enslave and kill us. We must return to the wisdom of parents and trusting each other if we are to survive this toxic pharmacological assault on humanity.

So we avoid vaccines. Yep, all of them (unless you’re in the third world and want to take BCG to reduce the risk of tuberculosis). Of course we avoid other toxicants too. We warn others, one at a time. We slowly back away from the genocidal culture that did this to us and we build our own parallel society and our own self-sufficient communities. Mainstream society is dying and will collapse completely on its current trajectory. So we step off that path and chart our own better course. That’s the work of the next 50 years.