Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccines: what the evidence says · JRE #1999

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

Kennedy has repeated this specific 1,135% figure in multiple interviews, including this one (FactCheck.org quotes this exact exchange with Rogan), attributing it to an early run of Thomas Verstraeten's Vaccine Safety Datalink analysis for the CDC. There is no public record of Verstraeten presenting a relative risk of 11.35 (which converts to roughly 1,035%, not 1,135%); the closest known figure, a relative risk range of 7.62 to 11.35, comes from a 2004 slide presentation by SafeMinds, an anti-vaccine advocacy group, which says it obtained the underlying statistical tables via a Freedom of Information Act request, without releasing the original documents or confidence intervals, and which describes the exposure as thimerosal in the highest category rather than specifically hepatitis B vaccine timing. Verstraeten's own published, peer-reviewed study of thimerosal-containing vaccines (Pediatrics, November 2003), based on more than 124,000 infants across health maintenance organizations, found no significant association between thimerosal exposure and autism in either phase of the analysis, though an early phase found some other associations (tics, language delay) that did not hold up in the second phase. Verstraeten has rejected the narrative that his findings were diluted or covered up. Subsequent larger and more rigorous studies have also found no causal link between thimerosal-containing or hepatitis B vaccines and autism. The specific 1,135% statistic therefore traces to an unpublished, uncorroborated secondary source rather than any validated CDC finding, and it does not match the peer-reviewed results of the study it is attributed to.