DO VACCINATIONS CAUSE AUTISM? DEMENTIA?

But before going into my topic of the day, I wondered why that huge (#6 on all-time list) earthquake did not produce a gigantic tsunami (from the Star-Advertiser):

The most recent event had an estimated magnitude of 8.7 or 8.8 on the scale scientists use to measure the strength of earthquakes.   By contrast, catastrophic tsunamis in the past, including a wave that struck Indonesia in 2004 and another that hit Japan in 2011, were generated by a quake of about magnitude 9.  That might sound comparable to Wednesday’s quake, Melgar said, but it is significantly bigger. That’s because the earthquake scale is logarithmic: A magnitude- 9 event possesses about 10 times as much energy as a magnitude-8.7 event, and about three times as much energy as a magnitude-8.8 event.  Also, current models suggest that Wednesday’s earthquake occurred across a stretch of seafloor that was hundreds of miles long. The longer the quake, the more energetic the tsunami can be.

For example, the largest earthquake ever was the Great Chilean Earthquake of 1960 from the coastline of Valdivia, a 9.4 moment magnitude, although some sources went as high as 9.6.

• At that 9.4 figure, produced 8 times more energy than the recent 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake

• You can calculate yourself this comparison:

To compare the energy released by two earthquakes, calculate the energy released for each earthquake using their respective magnitudes, then divide the larger energy value by the smaller one. The formula to estimate energy release from magnitude is log E = 5.24 + 1.44Mw, where Mw is the moment magnitude.

• 
  Hilo, Hawaii, 6200 miles away, was in 1960 struck by a tsunami of 35 feet (61 deaths) or 7 times higher than the 5 feet recorded there yesterday.

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  The second largest was the 1964 Alaska Prince William Sound earthquake of 9.2, #3 the 2004 Indonesian Great Sumatra Earthquake also at 9.2, #4 the Japan Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 and #5 the Russian Kamchatka Earthquake of 1952, which caused 12 foot waves over Hilo, with no casualties.

• 
  Land-based earthquakes have had more deaths.
• #1  300,000 fatalities from the 1976 China Tangshan Earthquake of 7.6 moment magnitude.
• #2  273,000 fatalities from the 1920 China Haiyuan Earthquake of 7.6 MM.

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  #3  250,000 fatalities from the 526 Antioch, Byzantine Empire (now Turkey) Earthquake of 7.0 MM.
• #4  230,000 fatalities from the 1139 Ganja (now Azerbaijan) Earthquake of 7.0 MM.

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  #5  227,898 fatalities from the 2004 Great Sumatra Earthquake of 9.2 MM.  Note that those others above occurred on land, while this one occurred 100 miles away at sea, so the resultant tsunami caused the deaths.

Now on to my posting of today.  Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long espoused a belief that routine childhood vaccinations are linked to autism.  During his confirmation hearing he was severely questioned on this issue:

• The Autism Science Foundation has a web page on the science of autism and vaccines.
• From the Center for American Progress, RFK Jr:

...altered research priorities at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by canceling studies on mRNA vaccines and vaccine hesitancy as well as by closing a network of centers working to prevent future pandemics. He reduced transparency by limiting public comment opportunitiesduring the development of new regulations. And, alarmingly, he hired David Geier, a known vaccine skeptic who Maryland regulators disciplined for practicing medicine without a license, to lead a study to reinvestigate the long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.

David Geier is not a physician and only has a bachelor's degree  His father Mark, is a doctor, who just passed away earlier this year.   His medical license was suspended by seven states.  David is known to have given autistic children a dangerous, unapproved drug and improperly prescribed puberty blockers.  Read this article:  Practiced Unlicensed Medicine on Autistic Kids.

Vaccines protect children.

• 508 million cases of illnesses were prevented by vaccinations of children in the U.S. from 1994-2023
• 32 million hospitalizations were prevented by vaccinations during this period.
• One million individual thus lived.

From Richard Brill.

• In 1998, a paper in The Lancet (as respected as the AMA Journal, Science and Nature), the British medical journal, suggested a link between the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine and AUTISM.  This significantly alarmed parents and the public.  Vaccination rates dropped and outbreaks of measles surged.  There was one major problem:  the PAPER WAS WRONG.
• 
  Research headed by British physician Andrew Wakefield.
• Only 12 children were examine in the study.
• Worse, all the parents of these students believed the MMR vaccine had harmed their children.
• Further, Wakefield failed to disclose that he was being paid by lawyers preparing a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers of this vaccine.

• 
  Furthermore, other researchers could not replicate the results.
• In 2010, the British General Medical Council found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct and a dozen years after publication, fully retracted his paper as utterly false.  Wakefield lost his medical license.

• 
  Unfortunately the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism had widely spread online, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
• Large-scale studies involving hundred of thousands of children across many countries found NO LINK between ANY VACCINE and AUTISM.

Do vaccines cause DEMENTIA?

• First of all, around 75% of those with dementia have Alzheimer's Disease.
• Over 7 million Americans have Alzheimer's, and this number will almost double to 13 million by 2050.
• There are nearly 12 million Americans providing unpaid care for people with any kind of dementia.
• While healthcare cost will reach $384 billion this year, unpaid caregivers provide help at a value of another $413 billion/year.  This total will go up to $2 trillion in 2050.
• Twice as many women have this disease compared to men.
• 
  Here is a medical paper that seems to say the following:
• A growing literature supports a protective association between vaccines targeting an array of pathogens (e.g., influenza, pneumococcus, herpes zoster) and the risk of Alzheimer disease (AD).  This statement says that vaccines (like the regular flu shot) actually protect you from Alzheimer's.
• Vaccinations also activate the immune system, of course, which is how they promote immunity to pathogens. As a result, it is also possible that they would promote AD pathology, thereby worsening it.  Or, in other words, yes, vaccines could cause AD.
• You can read the entire journal article and be as confused as I am.  Good luck.  I only scanned this paper.

• 
  The England Journal of Medicine has an article titled:  Do Vaccines Raise or Lower Risk for Dementia? The Jury Remains Out.
• While the jury remains out, which means they're not sure, here is a quote from the abstract.

Contrary to their expectations, the authors found that, compared with no exposure, vaccination was associated with increased risk for dementia (odds ratio, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.36–1.40), most of which was associated with influenza and pneumococcal immunization. In addition, dementia risk rose with an increasing number of administered vaccines, with the greatest increase immediately after the end of the 2-year lag.

• And a further comment.

As the authors note, these data do not support a role for vaccination to prevent dementia. Moreover, the observed increase in risk with vaccination was unexpected — and not clearly biologically plausible. As the authors and editorialists point out, unmeasured and confounding detection biases probably account for these results; for example, people with dementia may be more likely to be vaccinated due to caregivers' concerns or because of residence in skilled nursing facilities. The findings in this study are not the last word on the issue.

• 
  So I thought I would go to Google's AI Overview.
• Several recent studies suggest that far from causing dementia, some routine vaccinations may actually be associated with a reduced risk of developing it later in life.
• A study examining over 130 million people found a link between routine vaccinations and a lower risk of dementia.
• Research published in February 2025 showed that people who had received the shingles vaccine were 20% less likely to develop dementia over the next seven years than those who had not. This protective effect was found to be even stronger in women.

Those human research studies caused me mild concern.  Liked the Artificial Intelligence version better.

So a final analysis:

• Vaccinations DO NOT cause autism.
• Vaccinations might cause some types of dementia, but more probably not.  On the other hand, it appears that taking the shingles vaccine lowers the rate of dementia, plus other vaccines could similarly be beneficial to retard the onset of dementia.  
• Or, childhood vaccines do a lot more good than bad, with maybe no measurable bad, while vaccines also are generally beneficial for the eldest generation, with more research needed to confirm this belief.
• The current Trump administration will tend to be anti-vaccination, so individuals will themselves need to determine if any available vaccination needs to be taken.  Do you heed political or scientific/medical recommendations?  One longer term problem, JFK Jr, secretary of Health and Human Resources, is reducing funds for the development of the best science for future vaccines.

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10 MIRACLES TO SUPREME SUCCESS

Before those miracles, a few newsworthy items:

• At 1:25PM Hawaii time, 83 miles southeast of Kamchaka, at a depth of 46 miles, the sixth largest earthquake of magnitude 8.8 shook Russia, alarming  those living along any Pacific coastline about an incoming tsunami.

• 
  Did you know that a tsunami moves at about the speed of a commercial passenger plane?  I used this coincidence in drafting a novel currently titled 6 Hours to Alaska, about a mega tsunami heading for that state from Hawaii.

• 
  As best as I can determine, Hawaii, more specifically, Kahului Harbor on Maui, experienced about the highest far shore wave, of 5.7 feet, not 10 feet.  However, no damage to that island, or entire state, and, apparently, no deaths from this traumatic event, even in Russia, which experienced a 16-foot wave.
• 
  The Trump tariffs become real on Friday, August 1, unless he changes his mind.  Details?  Click here.

• Of course, the feud between Trump and Stephen Colbert continues.

Just watched Unknown:  Cosmic Time Machine, a Netflix documentary (Rotten Tomatoes audiences gave it an 88% rating) on the James Webb Space Telescope.  Yes, according to NASA's leadership, the fact that this project succeeded took 10 Miracles.  Click here and you, too, can watch this 1 hour and 2 minutes production.  And, incidentally, Unknown is a new four-part docuseries event that began with The Lost Pyramid on July 3 (100/73 on RT), Killer Robots (also 100/73 RT) on July 10 and Cave of Bones (75/58 RT) on July 17.  While the Rotten Tomatoes ratings of CofB were low, the synopsis is intriguing:  In South Africa's Cradle of Humankind, Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger has found the world's oldest graveyard -- and it's not human. If Lee and his team can prove that this ancient, small brained, ape-like creature practiced complex burial rituals, it will change everything we know about hominid evolution and the origins of belief.

The history of the James Webb Space Telescope.

• 1980s  Discussions began.
• 1990s  Serious planning began early in this decade for a Next Generation Space Telescope, suggesting a budget of half a billion dollars.
• 1993   The year when astronauts had to fix the flawed optics of the Hubble Space Telescope.
• 1994  A committee was formed to study possible missions and programs for optical-ultraviolet astronomy in space for the first decades of the 21st century.

• 
  1996   Idea for an infrared-sensitive telescope to reach back in cosmic time to the birth of the first galaxies.  The European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency signed on as partners.
• 
  2002    This NGST was named after NASA's second administrator (1961-1968), James E. Webb, who led the agency during the Apollo program that put boots on Moon.  He had passed away a decade earlier in 1992.
• 2003    NASA awarded TRW $824.8 million for the James Webb Space Telescope, for a launch date in 2010.  
• NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland managed the project, with John Mather as project scientist.
• Later in 2003, TRW was acquired by Northrop Grumman, and became Northrop Grumman Space Technology.
• 
  2005    Cost of project went up to $4.5 billion.  This a photo of the full-scale model on display at Goddard that year.
• 2011    Final design and fabrication phase.
• 2015 The role of James Webb in the lavender scare about homosexuals in federal employment almost changed the name of the telescope.

• 
  2016    Final construction of Webb telescope.
• 2018  Launch date extended to May 2020, then to March 2021, when the board identified 344 potential single-point failures.  If any one failed, the telescope would not work.
• 2019    Mechanical integration of the telescope was completed.  
• In initial planning, this was supposed to occur in 2007.
• Final tests in Redondo Beach, California.
• 
  A ship carrying the telescope left on 25September2021, passed through the Panama Canal, and arrived in  French Guiana on 12October2021.

• 
  This was a cooperative program among NASA, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency.  The European Spaceport is located in French Guiana, and has been operational since 1968.  Selected because it is closer to the equator and has open sea to the east and north.

• 
  From the beginning, the U.S. Congress grumbled a lot about the initial cost, then fought increases.  
• The original estimated cost of less than a billion dollars was now up to $9.7 billion, with Europe contributing $809 million and Canada $200 million.

• 
  In comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope in 1972 had an estimated development cost of $300 million (or $2.225 billion in 2024 dollars), but by the time it reached orbit in 1990, had a cost of $9 billion, plus after servicing and fixing, cost $16 billion in 2025 dollars.  The Hubble operated for 31 years.  Here is a comparison of the two.

• 
  As a quick aside, other expensive government projects (all adjusted to 2025 dollars)
• $44 trillion, 2023-2030, cost to remediate global warming for the world.

• 
  $663 billion, 1956- present, Interstate Highway System.
• $311 billion, 1960-1973, Project Apollo (Man on the Moon).

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  $120 billion, now, modernization of the U.S. Navy, with the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier itself at $13 billion.
• 
  $50 billion, next generation F-47 stealth fighter for U.S. Air Force.
• $36 billion, Manhattan Project, Atomic Bomb.

• 
  Several thousand staff from 20 countries, involving 258 organizations, 104 from the U.S.
• Four key goals:

• to search for light from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe after the Big Bang
• to study galaxy formation and evolution
• to understand star formation and planet formation
• to study planetary systems and the origins of life^[159]

• 
  Christmas Day, 25December2021:  the Webb was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket and took a month to travel nearly a million miles to its permanent home, Lagrange point 2 (L2):  a spot in space where the telescope is in constant sunlight to power solar panels, but with a sunshield to prevent light from the Sun, Earth and Moon from reaching the instruments.  Watch this video to see the halo orbit.  Or side view from the Sun.

• 
  This orientation keeps the spacecraft temperature constant, but below 50 K, to allow for ideal infrared observations.
• Why infrared?  Because of the cosmological redshift, while also better penetrating obscuring dust and gas.
• The telescope can see 40% of the sky at any given time, but, over a period of six months, all of the sky.
• 
  The primary mirror is a gold-coated beryllium reflector with a 21 feet diameter.  There are 18 hexagonal segments, allowing for folding to fit inside the spacecraft.
• This telescope will never be serviced, for it is too far away.  Was designed to perfectly work for 5 years, and did so well that the Webb might remain operational for around 20 years, when the propellant capacity is exhausted.  Will be able to see back a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the first galaxies formed.  The universe is 13.79 billion years old.

• 
  Among the recurring problems are micrometeoroid strikes.
• There were 2377 proposals to utilize the telescope, and 266 were approved.
• Scientific operations commenced on 11July2022.

• 
  With notable exceptions, experimental data are kept private for one year to allow scientists to interpret it.  Then this raw info is released to the public.
• The first color images were released on Day 2, 12July2022.  The below is of the Deep Field, a Galaxy cluster, with the Hubble version on top and the Webb below.

• According to NASA/ESA/CSA, the science performance of the JWST is better than expected.
• June 2025  Einstein Ring.  

• June 2025  First direct image of an exoplanet about 111 light-years away, maybe...has not yet been fully confirmed.

• July 2025  Cat's Paw Nebula.

As stated earlier, the Universe began 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang.  The James Webb Space Telescope can see as far back as 13.1 billion years ago.  How is this possible?  That is, to take a photo of something that occurred that long ago?  Maybe this explanation best answers those questions.

NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn says that seeing “literally” back in time is a “trick of physics,” because it takes time for light to travel through space – sunlight is technically eight minutes old before we see it, because that’s how long it takes to reach Earth. So that light is technically from the past; now stretch that idea to stars and galaxies a gazillion miles away, and you can see things as they were billions of years ago, not as they are right now. And that’s how we can see the early days of the universe itself. Is your mind blown all over the living room wall? It should be.

Finally, what were those 10 miracles that made the James Webb Space Telescope a success?  I don't remember, and can't seem to find anything on the world wide web.  But if you're interested, go to Netflix.  Or click on this to watch this documentary.

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