A Review of "An Inconvenient Study"
Yet another study shows that there is a subgroup of kids who are thriving. They just happen to be vaccine free.
I have been reluctant to write about the “Inconvenient Study” featured in the film “An Inconvenient Study” produced by Del BigTree and his organization, Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) because its findings align with every other study that compares the overall health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. What good will it do if nobody will believe it?
The Study
Unless you are still of the opinion that vaccines have repeatedly been proven “safe” and are the central reason why kids rarely die of preventable infectious diseases this study conducted by the Henry Ford Health System, “Impact of Childhood Vaccination on Short and Long-Term Chronic Health Outcomes in Children: A Birth Cohort Study”, offers nothing new.
Summarizing the study’s central findings, vaccination was independently associated with:
a 153% increased risk in developing a chronic health condition
a 325% increased risk of asthma
a 379% increased risk of an autoimmune disease
a 203% increased risk of atopic disease
a 31% increased risk of eczema
a 453% increased risk of a neurodevelopmental disorder
a 250% increased risk of a mental health disorder
There were no chronic health conditions associated with being unvaccinated. Hazard ratios with regard to brain dysfunction, ADHD, diabetes, behavioral disabilities, learning and intellectual disabilities, tics and other psychological disorders could not be calculated because there were none in the unvaccinated cohort.
With regard to autism, no statistical significant differences could be calculated because there were too few cases in the unvaccinated group (only 1 case in nearly 2 thousand kids).
Though the two cohorts were not identical in every way, the calculated difference in risk for developing a chronic disease were adjusted for gender, race, birth weight, respiratory distress at birth, birth trauma and prematurity.
The authors reasonably state in their conclusions:
“This suggests that in certain children, exposure to vaccination may increase the likelihood of developing a chronic health condition, particularly for one of these conditions.”
This was best explained in this graphic:
The graph shows that as kids get older they are more likely to be diagnosed with a chronic disease. However the difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated kids cannot be ignored. The CDC’s official statistics are that >40% of school aged children have “at least one chronic health condition”. This number is based on 2021 data. As most school aged children are vaccinated, CDC data corroborates this study’s findings.
These findings are also in alignment with another study authored by (one time) Oregon pediatrician, Paul Thomas, MD, and James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, “Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses Along the Axis of Vaccination”:
Like the Ford study, this was a retrospective study which examined the health outcomes of children born into Dr. Thomas’ practice, separated by vaccination status. It was peer-reviewed and published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, only to be retracted for “methodological issues” soon after. Of note, Dr. Thomas was stripped of his license to practice by the Oregon Board of Medicine several days after the study was published because he was deemed a threat to public health.
Another study, this one conducted in 2025 which compared the incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders among vaccinated and unvaccinated nine year olds in the Florida Medicaid Program, showed a troubling association of vaccinations with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) among other things:
It is important to note that not only do these findings show an association with vaccination and ASD, it demonstrates dose dependency, a hallmark of causation.
The Movie
In order to grasp the significance of the Henry Ford Study I would strongly suggest watching the movie (for free) “An Inconvenient Study” (and consider supporting it with a donation). You can view it here.
The lead author of the study is Dr. Marcus Zervos, Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, MI, one of the biggest health care systems in the United States. Zervos also is professor of Medicine at Wayne State University of Medicine.
According to BigTree’s account, he first met with Dr. Zervos in 2017 along with attorney, Aaron Siri. Zervos was apparently interested in BigTree’s controversial film, “Vaxxed” (the film which opened my eyes to how families of vaccine injured children were being ignored). He expressed an interest in doing the study the CDC has avoided: a comparison of chronic health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated kids.
As a concession to the public after the passage of the National Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 which shields vaccine manufacturers from any liability, the CDC is required to periodically examine the safety of their vaccine schedule. Despite expanding their vaccine recommendations four-fold the CDC has yet to comply.
Zervos, a strong proponent of vaccines and vaccine mandates, saw the utility in doing such a study. Wouldn’t that be the best way to silence the “antivaxxers”? He also promised that he would publish his findings, no matter what they showed.
To his credit Dr. Zervos completed the study in 2020. He didn’t publish it. Unaware of the study’s findings, BigTree met with Dr. Zervos to discuss the study’s publication. He recorded their conversation over dinner on hidden camera. The film centers around the candid conversation between a distinguished physician and medical researcher and one of the biggest spreaders of “antivax misinformation”.
Zervos’ admissions are stunning:
He believes his study could not have been done any better.
He believes the findings are valid and extremely important.
He believes the findings warrant replication by other centers with bigger cohorts.
He believes the study should be published.
He isn’t going to publish it because he doesn’t want to be ruined.
BigTree tries to respectfully remind him that he could spearhead a movement that could reverse the trajectory of the explosion of pediatric chronic diseases in this country. Isn’t that a worthy cause? Zervos is left in silent agreement but is firm in his decision to not use his knowledge, credentials and clout to push back on the vaccine industry and medical orthodoxy. Why?
Apparently, when he tried to bring public attention to another study of his, this one supporting the use of Hydroxychloroquine in treating Covid-19, he was attacked by then NIAID director Anthony Fauci, MD. The Public Relations Department at Henry Ford Health System placed him under a gag order. They were able to convince him that going public with counterfactual data and perspectives would do no good because nobody would listen, and he would be out of a job.
That’s how it works folks.
Personally I find Zervos’ position irreconcilable with a physician’s code of ethics. Beyond that, doesn’t every person even toying with the idea of devoting their best years to the arduous study required to obtain a medical degree and training dream of eventually being responsible for a breakthrough that improves the lives of millions of children? How is this possible?
Zervos’ admissions on hidden camera are not admissible in a court of law. But the highest court in the land is the court of public opinion. For that reason, I commend BigTree for having the foresight to record this conversation knowing full well that the truth about how the expert class gets manipulated and threatened could only be exposed off the record.
I thought I knew how their conversation was going to go. What I didn’t expect was for Dr. Zervos to be so honest about the strength of the study. This alone is worth ninety minutes of your time. The movie also serves as an excellent introduction for anyone who sincerely curious about the “antivax” movement in this country. Please consider sharing it.
BigTree and Siri do a thorough job contextualizing the Henry Ford Study for the layperson. The film includes/explains:
How a safety trial should be conducted
The CDC’s tacit admission that there are no double blinded randomized saline placebo trials conducted on vaccines. Thus no safety claims can be made about any vaccine on the childhood immunization schedule.
The flimsy argument that it would be unethical to do such a study because “safe vaccines” can be used as a placebo
The inherent problems with doing a retrospective study on a large, heterogenous group of kids
The first hand account of parents whose children suffered devastating injuries within days or hours of receiving one or more vaccines, including the MacDowell triplets who all suffered devastating and irreversible neurological injury after receiving the pneumococcal vaccine in 2007 (nearly impossible to explain with coincidence alone)
How the authors of the Ford Study followed the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) guidelines in conducting their study to a tee.
Revealing portions of Aaron Siri’s deposition of the modern day grandfather of vaccines, Dr. Stanley Plotkin (Plotkin begrudgingly admits that there is neither proof of harm nor safety of vaccines to date)
Conclusion
The folks at HFHS are critical of their own study and deem it unfit for publication, going so far as to issue a cease-and-desist letter to ICAN, claiming that it is spreading “false, misleading, and defamatory statements ... that violate Michigan and federal law”.
Christine Cole Johnson, chair of public health science at Henry Ford Health stated,
“The most glaring problem was a substantial discrepancy in the amount of time researchers had to evaluate the onset of chronic disease in the unvaccinated patients.”
But Drs. Peter McCullough and Joseph Ladapo (both highly credentialed and published physicians and medical scientists) as well as lead author Zervos (as stated off the record) believe that is unfounded criticism.
Such differences will always appear in retrospective studies which is why the authors conducted sensitivity analyses to adjust for this difference. When subgroups of unvaccinated and vaccinated kids with equal periods of observation were compared the findings still held.
Of note, when comparing groups that were enrolled for 1, 3 and 5 years the Incidence Rate Ratios (IRR) between vaccinated and unvaccinated with regard to chronic health conditions were 2.75, 3.38 and 4.09. In other words, when vaccinated and unvaccinated children are observed for one year, the vaccinated have a 2.75 times greater risk of being diagnosed with a chronic disease. When observed for five years, they have a greater than four times the risk. This suggests that more vaccinations increase the risk of chronic disease, that chronic disease resulting from vaccinations takes years to manifest, or both.
The propensity to seek medical care, which will be higher in the vaccinated group because of frequent well-child vaccine visits will increase the likelihood of diagnoses because they are examined more frequently. This was also addressed in sensitivity analyses which once again confirmed the study’s basic findings.
Zervos and co-authors explicitly point out that the unvaccinated children who had a chronic disease diagnosis sought medical care almost as often as those who were vaccinated. This is how they argue that unvaccinated children who develop a chronic disease would not escape detection as often as their critics claim.
If you are like most people and cannot know who is “more right”, the study’s critics or its defenders, consider the following:
Let us say that there was a different, hypothetical study that compared vaccinated and unvaccinated kids. In this study the researchers encountered the opposite problem and found that overall, the unvaccinated children were followed longer than the vaccinated. Like Zervos et al, the researchers isolated subgroups with equal observational periods and found that both groups had equal risk of developing a chronic disease. How do you think the medical orthodoxy would regard such a study? Would they claim that it was not fit for publishing for the same reasons they are dismissing the Zervos study? Or would they tout it as undeniable proof of vaccine safety?
If you think the critics are sincere and do not have a double standard, why then aren’t they interested in redoing the Zervos study correctly in order to definitively answer the questions it raises?
Finally, Dr. Zervos is a highly respected physician scientist having served as the principle investigator on hundreds of published studies. There is no plausible reason why he would abandon his scientific integrity while conducting this study. Moreover he was unambiguous in his support of what he found. If he felt his investigation did not meet his own standards for scientific rigor, why didn’t he say that off the record? It would have been easier to explain why he was breaking his promise to publish his study by citing its shortcomings. Instead he plainly stated that he is being coerced by the system that has endowed him with his career—an embarrassing admission for a scientist of any caliber.
If you choose to believe the public statements from the Henry Ford Health System and other critics you would have to accept that Zervos was ill-equipped to assess the validity of his own study or lying to spread conspiracy theories about the integrity of the medical establishment, the very same one that grants his professional opinion legitimacy.
What we are witnessing is exactly what BigTree explained in his movie. Properly matched prospective trials with long observational periods with saline placebos are not conducted. Retrospective comparisons which could reveal safety issues as the studies mentioned here are dismissed because they cannot account for all confounders.
No doctor, researcher or national health system will dare challenge the status quo, and we as a nation continue to fly blind as our children suffer an increasing burden of disease.
Please leave your comments.
Their narrative crumbling is becoming palpable.
Great, informative essay. Thank so much!