"Might all of these antigens injected into the bodies of small children result in an inflammatory response that could—in some way that is not yet fully understood— injure their developing brains?"

Leake wrote, "In my experience as a true crime writer, whenever individuals or groups object to a suspicious incident being merely investigated, one can be virtually certain that such individuals or groups are concealing something. It seems to me that all Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. proposes to do is commission unbiased researchers to conduct a proper investigation. What reasonable person who cares about kids would object to such an investigation?"

WND long has reported on the charges that a vaccine-autism link should be investigated.

In fact, in a column published on WND nearly a decade ago, Kennedy himself explained some of the questions that need to be addressed.

There, he cited the case of a defendant in a criminal indictment, for wire fraud and money laundering, that happened "in connection with more than $1 million in research grants he allegedly pilfered from CDC as he was ginning up fraudulent studies to 'prove' that vaccines don't cause autism."

He noted that fugitive, Poul Thorsen, "is one of the co-authors and data manager for two leading foreign studies offered by CDC as the foundation of its claims that vaccines do not cause autism."

One of the suspected factors is thimerosol, a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines, and a study in Denmark showed that when thimerosol was banned, autism reports increased – but that was linked to new reporting requirements that massively enhanced the population suffering from autism.

Further, he charged that CDC scientists "deliberately manipulated the final dataset [of a study] to prevent public disclosure of the decrease in autism since it did not support the study's conclusion that there was no association between thimerosal and autism."

Kennedy explained, "It would be difficult to overstate the cataclysmic impacts of Thorsen's mischief on global health. The study he is accused of fabricating was an instrumental piece of evidence cited by The Institute of Medicine to justify its infamous 2004 conclusion that thimerosal was not causing autism. IOM's declaration laid the foundation for dismissal of some 5,000 autism cases by the United States Court of Claims (The Vaccine Court). The Madsen et al. 2003 study has been repeatedly cited by public health agencies to justify the inclusion by CDC of thimerosal in 50 million flu shots given to Americans, including pregnant women, and the World Health Organization's (WHO) decision to inoculate 100 million children in developing nations annually with thimerosal preserved vaccines."

The scandal spread worldwide, with Australia banning a film documenting the link between vaccines and autism.

Three years later, WND reported on a video in which two parents tearfully told the story of their tragedy – triplets all becoming autistic within hours of getting a vaccination at the age of nine months.

That came to light just as Mark Green, then elected to the U.S. House but not yet seated, publicly raised the issue of a vaccine-autism link to the national level.

At the time Green, a medical doctor, questioned data from the CDC and other institutions that purport to disprove the vaccine link.

"Let me say this about autism," Green said at the time. "I have committed to people in my community, up in Montgomery County, to stand on the CDC's desk and get the real data on vaccines. Because there is some concern that the rise in autism is the result of the preservatives that are in our vaccines.

"As a physician, I can make that argument and I can look at it academically and make the argument against the CDC, if they really want to engage me on it," Green said.

Jane Orient, M.D., at the time a former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, said the real problems are a lack of adequate research and the medical industry's apparent effort to conceal any link between vaccines and autism.

"We just really don't know [the causes] and we're not doing the research" that is needed, she told WND then.

It was the McDowell family of Michigan on video on Brighteon.com that got tens of thousands of views in just days.

Natural News reported, "The video shows below, healthy triplets all became autistic within hours of vaccination, once again demonstrating that vaccines cause autism. The parents, the McDowell family in Detroit, Michigan, have spoken out publicly against the horrific medical violence being committed against children every day across America through toxic vaccines."

The parents, David and Brenda McDowell, explain in the video:

On June 25th, 2007, we brought them in for the [vaccine] shot… we went in at 10 am. All three. My daughter still has the mark on her leg from the shot… we did the boys as well. By noon, Claire shut completely off. It was as if she was blind, and deaf, and complete failure to thrive, from super super happy, smiley girl to… she had full blown eye contact, and she shut right down. All she did was stare at the ceiling.

At 2:00 we watched Richie shut off. All his mama, dadda, and the furniture walking and everything just shut of. All the giggles, all the smiles, again failure to thrive. They lost all their reflexes… they stopped blinking, yawning, coughing, sneezing, they lost their startle reflex… that was 2:00.

The worst was when we saw the final one shut down. We lost Robbie, he looked like he was hit by a bus. He had a stunned look on his face… he acted deaf, he lost his happiness. They were no longer engaged in anything or anyone. They lost their smiles. They never held hands again, never looked at each other again."

The McDowells explained that they later were informed the vaccine their children got was contaminated and was recalled after it killed a two-year-old.

But they said they were told there was no legal recourse for them.