In a Scribd document called "130 Research papers supporting Vaccine/Autism Causation", Ginger Taylor makes the following claim:
Mainstream research has found that vaccines and their ingredients can cause the underlying medical conditions that committed physicians and researchers are commonly finding in children who have been given an autism diagnosis. These conditions include gastrointestinal damage, immune system impairment, chronic infections, mitochondrial disorders, autoimmune conditions, neurological regression, glial cell activation, brain inflammation, damage to the blood–brain barrier, seizures, synaptic dysfunction, dendritic cell dysfunction, mercury poisoning, aluminum toxicity, gene activation and alteration, glutathione depletion, impaired methylation, oxidative stress, impaired thioredoxin regulation, mineral deficiencies, impairment of the opioid system, endocrine dysfunction, cellular apoptosis, and other disorders.
We will ignore that few or none of the "medical conditions" Taylor lists are exclusive to autism, or are included in the diagnostic criteria for autism. This is the Nth iteration of a "list of papers supporting the vaccine-autism link" that Taylor has published. I've lost count of the iterations. I first debunked Taylor's list back in August 2013, when she only had 76 papers on the list.
Ginger Taylor, the person who has been publishing these lists, has been a loud voice in the "vaccines do too cause autism" movement, and has been since 2004. She has been known to make much of her "scientific background" as a marriage and family therapist but she actually was a paid political operative. Nonetheless, this list keeps being cited, mostly by the scientifically naive, as "proof" that vaccines can be causal in autism, and latterly, that the CDC is covering something up. 
By 2016 the list was up to 124 papers, and while I wrote about the list, two science bloggers did the heavy lifting of analyzing the papers. The Logic of Science blog, written by a PhD candidate in biology, published Vaccines and autism: A thorough review of the evidence. Then at Stories from the Trauma Bay, a physician who is a trauma surgeon published 124 papers that DO NOT prove vaccines cause autism.
Before we set off on looking at each of the papers, let me remind readers (or tell readers for the first time) about some background. The US has, as many countries do not, a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). That is to say, the US recognizes that, very rarely, someone getting a vaccine might suffer an injury, from the vaccine itself or from the process of being vaccinated, and has set up a compensation program, funded by a surcharge on all vaccines. Starting in about 2001, parents began filing claims with NVICP that their children's autism had been caused by vaccines. Claims went from a few hundred a year to thousands. In 2002, NVICP, acting with a panel of parent-claimaints and their attorneys (the Petitioners Committee), agreed to hear test cases, selected by the petitioners, on their three theories on how vaccines could be causal in autism:
- Theory 1: a combination of MMR and Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines could cause autism
- Theory 2: Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines alone could cause autism
- Theory 3: MMR vaccines alone could cause autism.
These collectively were known as the Omnibus Autism Proceeding. http://www.vaccinateyourbaby.org/safe/autism/omnibus_proceeding.cfmThe Petitioners Committee selected three test cases for each of the theories -- children whose cases they thought best made the case for their argument. However,the Petitioners Committee agreed, in 2008, that the test cases and hearings on Theory 1 would suffice for Theory 3 as well. Both documents and hearings on the three theories were exhaustive. On February 12, 2009, NVICP found that Theory 1 was not supported by the weight of the evidence including expert testimony. On On March 12, 2010, NVICP found that Theory 2 was not supported by the weight of the evidence including expert testimony.
Now, science isn't decided by legal rulings. However, these rulings were supported by science. The other thing about the NVICP is that the standard of evidence required in cases adjudicated there is much less than in other courts -- 50% plus a feather (the Althen standard).
Another ground-laying episode: there are hierarchies of evidence: how strong a claim is. Logic of Science's pyramid is one of the clearest I've found, so I'm sharing it here.
The image is of a pyramid. Let me lay out the levels, from strongest to weakest:
Studies specifically on the relationship between the vaccine ingredient thimerosal and autism:
These studies make a very strong case that thimerosal does not cause autism. So do the studies that show that autism rates did not drop after thimerosal was removed from vaccines (Madsen et al. 2003; Schechter and Grether 2008).
On to the studies that Ms. Taylor claims "support the vaccine-autism link". ( This is going to be long. )
I used this numbering system "131 papers number: X. 124 papers number: Y. 72 papers number: Z", because Ms. Taylor likes to shuffle the order of the papers from iteration to iteration. It helps me keep clear which papers are new and which are just in a different order.
If you would prefer to download a Word document with links, here it is: Download Are there 131 Papers That Support Vaccine
131 papers number: 1. 124 papers number: 1. 72 papers number: 0 Verstraeten TM, Davies R, Gu D, DeStefano F. Increased risk of developmental neurologic impairment after high exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccine in first month of life. Division of Epidemiology and Surveillance, Vaccine Safety and Development Branch, National Immunization Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1999. This is Phase I of a planned 2-phase study. This first phase was presented at the 2000 Simpsonwood conference, and problems and shortcomings in the data were throughly discussed at that conference, leading the Verstraeten team to look more closely at the data. The second phase of the was published in 2003, Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases. It is at the least misleading to list only the first phase. The true story of Simpsonwood and the evolution of the Verstraeten papers is covered in depth in Paul Offit's Autism's False Prophets, Emily Willingham reviews the facts in a Forbes article, Is The CDC Hiding Data About Mercury, Vaccines, And Autism? and a longer, more detailed blog post byLindsay Beyerstein Simpsonwood, thimerosal, and vaccines (II)l Thimerosal is no longer used in US pediatric vaccines and has been exonerated of causality in autism (see Hurley 2010, Price 2010, Yoshimasu 2014, Taylor 2014). Does not establish that vaccines are causal in autism.
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