Book Review: 'Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism' by Peter J. Hotez
Insights into a man who sold his soul to the medical-industrial machine
In 2018, vaccinologist Peter J. Hotez, whose name most of us recognize from the fever dream that was Covid, published the book ‘Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad.’
The purpose of the book, according to Hotez, is to debunk the purported link between vaccines and autism, but overall it falls flat—so much so that even Hotez’s most devoted followers have called it a flop. As one GoodReads reviewer wrote,
“They say never meet your heroes; I say never read their memoirs.”
One of the book’s many problems is that it seems to suffer from an identity crisis. It doesn’t know what it wants to be—A memoir? A scientific treatise? A history book? An autobiography? As will soon be obvious, it seems to exist for one reason: To stroke the ego of a prideful man. And pride can get you into all sorts of trouble.
In the book’s foreword, professor Arthur L. Caplan immediately reassures readers that “dogged anti-vaccinators will hate this book!” It’s not the most persuasive tactic to convince vaccine skeptics, but as we will see, it’s in keeping with Hotez’s vilification of those people, i.e., anyone who doesn’t blindly pledge allegiance to the medical-industrial machine.
Interestingly, not that long ago Arthur L. Caplan criticized the collusion between governments and powerful, unelected entities. Caplan, who suffered from polio as a child, criticized Bill Gates’s obsession with polio eradication and other diseases because, he argued, there were far more pressing local problems that needed to be solved in poor nations than “capturing the last marginal cases [of diseases like polio]”.
As we will see, this criticism directly clashes with Hotez’s brand of science and his life’s work, which is focused on developing vaccines for ‘neglected’ diseases. I can’t help but wonder what external influences poisoned Caplan’s psyche for him to change his position and later support those he once criticized.
From Chapter 1 onward, Hotez drones on about his professional accomplishments, while treating his daughter Rachel, who you think would be the main focus of the book, as a mere afterthought. As Hotez himself admits, Rachel is not just an afterthought in the book, but in his life, too.
Rachel, who was first diagnosed with PDD-NOS (what is now known as autism) at 19 months, and then with significant intellectual disabilities at 5 years old, will never have the capacity to full develop intellectually or hold down a job of her own—both things Hotez clearly values above all else.
He writes,
“As part of an extended Jewish family that deeply values intellectual abilities and accomplishments, these findings were especially difficult for Ann and for me. Ann initially was not accepting of the diagnosis of PDD-NOS or the low level of intellectual ability . . . In the end, what was so devastating for us was not really the autism component, but instead it was the low level of intellectual functioning.”
Over and over, Hotez reminds us what Rachel can’t do.
As Hotez describes her (but in a less than favourable light), Rachel is social, compassionate, and non-judgemental. She’s also fiery, high energy, and values her friendships. And yes, she’s also loud, non-compliant, and marches to the beat of her own drum. In other words, she’s everything Hotez is not. Of all her personality traits, he seems to resent her non-compliance the most.
The way I see it, her traits are complementary to his own, but Hotez doesn’t see it that way. He wants his offspring to be just like him, as his other children are. At the height of his career, he boasted about his kids’ careers and then he ends with this:
“All of the kids wound up doing interesting things. But we still had Rachel with us.”
At one point he even wrote about potentially finding a cure for Rachel’s autism, a position that many disability advocates see as a form of eugenics. It’s as if he is still stuck in the denial phase, like this is a new diagnosis that he is still coming to terms with. But Rachel was an adult by the time the book was published, and he had been living with his knowledge—and experience—for many years. Nonetheless, his disdain bleeds into every mention of her.
I don’t judge Hotez or his wife, Ann, for feeling helpless, or resentful, or feeling like Rachel is, at times, a burden. I can’t guarantee that I would cope much better if I were in his shoes, but I’d like to think I would at least find something—anything— positive to say about my daughter who has disabilities especially if I were writing a book about her.
Fortunately for Hotez, Ann seems to be a grounding and stable force that he desperately needs. She’s been a stay-at-home mom for many years, taking care of all the kids, including Rachel, while Hotez’s primary focus has been his career—the same career that requires him to gallivant around the world to the detriment of his home life. As a compromise for being physically absent, Hotez promised he would “commute” to places closer to home, like Brazil and Panama. But his ego couldn’t stand it, and he quickly abandoned that promise. (By the end of the book, Hotez admits that he travels just as frequently, if not more than before, because his public advocacy work demands just as much of his time as his day job).
Ann also seems to have more sense than him. For example, Hotez shares that she scolds him for using the term ‘anti-vaxx’ because she believes it’s “pejorative and unnecessarily provocative.”
This excerpt sums up his marriage to Ann:
“I felt that my marriage to Ann was one of “divide and conquer.” Ann supported Rachel and the other kids while I tried to build “NTD (neglected tropical diseases) nation.””
And so he did. He built a brand out of himself while his wife stayed at home with the family they created. And yet, she’s barely included in the book, making it clear that Hotez is a provider to his ego first, and his family second.
So what does Hotez actually do for work?
Hotez’s central work is focused on developing vaccines for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) for the world’s poor, including hookworm, schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis (river blindness), and other parasitic diseases.
Sounds like a worthy cause—that is if you know nothing about these diseases.
The truth is there is no need for a vaccine for these ‘neglected’ diseases because safe, effective, and low-cost treatments already exist and have existed for many years.
For example, the ‘poor’ disease—onchocerciasis (‘river blindness’)—the leading cause of blindness in many African countries, has been completely eliminated in countries like Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico thanks to the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin—yes, the very same drug that the FDA mocked people for taking to treat Covid, framing it as a ‘livestock drug’, while full well knowing its versatility in treating a number of illnesses. In fact, the drug manufacturer Merck donated the drug to Colombia, making it the first country in the world to eliminate the disease. Ivermectin is also used to treat a number of other neglected diseases, but you would never know it as Hotez fails to mention any of this.
Additionally, deaths caused by the diseases Hotez seeks to eliminate by way of vaccination is actually very low. For example, some ~65,000 people die annually from hookworm, while the number of deaths from schistosomiasis range from ~11,000 to ~200,000.
There’s a bigger conversation to be had about the way the West seeks to ‘help’ the world’s poor. People living in the poorest countries continue to be deprived of their basic human needs—they have far more pressing matters to worry about than diseases that can be easily treated. Many still don’t have access to sufficient food, clean water, medical care, education, employment, the list goes on.
And now they have to worry about being tested as lab rats.
Hotez is not the only one on a lifelong pursuit to feed his bottomless ego. Bill Gates, the most influential philanthrocapitalist, has been providing millions in funding towards vaccine development for many years. In 2000, the Gates Foundation gave $750 million in seed money to Gavi (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations).
Hotez writes,
“…the Gates Foundation provided an amazing $750 million in seed money, which made it possible for Gavi to effectively seek co-investments and regular replenishments from prospective donor countries.”
Years later, the Gates Foundation gave Hotez and his team enough funds to work on developing a second vaccine for schistosomiasis when he was working at George Washington University (GWU).
Like Hotez, Bill Gates is an expert in treating the world’s poor as unwitting participants in unethical and dangerous experiments, contributing to the West’s checkered history of forcibly vaccinating the world’s poor under the guise of helping them. The Gates Foundation and organizations like Gavi have been funding clinical trials of untested and unapproved drugs in poor countries for decades. Laws and ethics need not apply.
For example, in 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a number of malaria and meningitis vaccine trials across Africa and HPV vaccine programs in India. All of these programs resulted in a significant number of death and injuries, with many locals alleging forced vaccination and uninformed consent.
While the Foundation has been lauded as being on the forefront of combatting AIDs, tuberculosis, and malaria, and spending billions towards institutions that provide low-cost treatments, it has consistently lobbied against price reductions for HIV drugs and other medicines. On top of treating the world’s poorest countries as his pharmaceutical playground, Gates also been criticized for being one of the greatest barriers for low-income people to get access to life saving medicines.
Like other other private foundations, The Gates Foundation is accountable to no one but its few trustees, and yet it wields immense power over international organizations—including the World Health Organization, the UN Health Agency, and even world governments.
Many people rightly woke up to the dangers of philanthrocapitalists like Bill Gates during Covid, but he is still widely revered as being one of the most generous philanthrocapitalists today—even Peter Singer, the world-renowned ethicist, has sang him praises.
Unsurprisingly, despite people like Hotez and Gates devoting their lives to ‘helping’ the world’s poor, runaway global inequality remains at an all-time high. This is precisely what Arthur L. Caplan was referring to in his earlier criticism of the medical-industrial machine.
Hotez’s work, with thanks to these public-private agencies that regularly funnel millions of dollars towards the development of new vaccines, amounts to what David Graeber would describe as a ‘bullshit job’ due to the simple fact that these NTDs could easily be eradicated with a fraction of the resources and fanfare.
More than halfway into the book, Hotez finally gets to the most important questions: What causes autism? Is there a link between vaccines and autism?
I assumed these questions would encompass a substantial portion of the book, but Hotez devotes about 19 pages to actually answering them. His responses are underwhelming at best. His rebuttal to the second question amounts to him simply regurgitating abstracts from papers and expecting the reader to connect the dots. He doesn’t go into much detail beyond this, nor does he actually address the common concerns espoused by vaccine skeptics.
He does, however, concede that vaccines, specifically multi-dose flu vaccines (which still contain thimerosal) in pregnant women may have an impact on the fetus. On the one hand, he’s firmly set in his views, but at the same time he gives concessions like this that would give any reader whiplash. Even Hotez’s most devout followers expressed disappointment for the lack of actual science presented in these pages.
A big part of the vaccine conversation are vaccine side effects. Unsurprisingly, Hotez pays very little mind to this as well.
He devotes just a few pages to discussing the establishment of VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Reporting System) in 1990, alluding that a system like this wasn’t really needed, but in the same breath he admits that vaccine side effects do occur and that there are thousands of still-pending claims for autism resulting from either the MMR or thimerosal-containing vaccine via the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP).
He admits that,
“…Opening the door to compensation for children with ASD could easily reach the trillion dollar level and bankrupt NVICP. In other words, payout for ASD could one day exceed the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement with the four large US tobacco companies.”
In saying this, Hotez acknowledges that it is in the interest of these vaccine institutions to dismiss the autism-vaccine link, lest they face bankruptcy.
As for the first question (What causes autism?), Hotez explains that there is an epigenetic component to autism, i.e., that it is caused in part by genes and one’s environment. The theory is that genes don’t simply turn on/off on a whim—they can, however, be switched ‘on’ due to various environmental factors. There is validity to this (and it’s a theory I personally support), but this position would actually reinforce the vaccine-autism link, not undermine it.
And with this being his position, I would have expected Hotez to include more information about what his wife went through with her pregnancy with Rachel, especially considering his position is that autism can develop in utero as early as the first trimester.
Additionally, Hotez fails to mention what vaccines his wife received while pregnant—which is an important point considering he conceded that there may be a link between the multi-dose flu shot and autism.
I understand it’s a highly sensitive topic and there’s a risk in playing the blame game, but it would have been invaluable to learn more about Ann’s experience while pregnant that might shed more light on Rachel’s condition. Instead, Hotez wastes most of the book talking about his career—his ambitious, his goals, and his priorities.
All of this is moot anyway since Hotez seems to have completely abandoned the epigenetic position. He now spouts the claim that there is an ‘autism gene’, as he did when he was interviewed for the Shot in the Arm propaganda film. In the documentary, he goes as far as to call the autism gene ‘Rachel’s gene’—as if a single gene had been discovered that directly causes autism and simply switches it ‘on’. There is absolutely no scientific basis to this claim whatsoever.
Near the end of the book, Hotez claims the ‘anti-vaccine’ movement is somehow singularly responsible for the lack of support services for people with autism.
He writes,
“[The anti-vaccine movement] is why there are so few resources for adults and children with ASD. [Anti-vaccine organizations] place their own distorted ideologies ahead of the needs of children with ASD and their families.”
Hotez’s anger would be more appropriately redirected to public and private agencies that actually fund ASD organizations, but I strongly suspect the source of his frustration has more to do with his own personal issues than these ‘anti-vaccine’ groups that have no control over how funds are allocated for other causes.
Hotez has been abundantly blessed in many ways. He has a doting wife, a fulfilling (to him) career, and the means to provide top-of-the-line care for Rachel, something that the average person doesn’t have the ability to do. Hotez has a lot to be grateful for, and yet he spends the little free time he has whining about other groups that have no influence over the availability of ASD services.
This is not a book about science. It’s a book about an egotistical, prideful man’s journey towards selling his soul to the medical-industrial machine.
Deadly. Bravo!