Michigan House Discusses Henry Ford Vaccine Study; Hospital Declines to Appear

A Michigan State House Oversight Subcommittee on the Child Welfare System held a special hearing on September 17 to discuss the unpublished Henry Ford study comparing health outcomes of vaccinated children against unvaccinated children. The same study was the subject of a feature film produced by Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) called An Inconvenient Study.

Attorney Aaron Siri was invited to a U.S. Senate hearing a year ago, chaired by Senator Ron Johnson, alongside Dr. Jake Scott. Siri presented the unpublished Henry Ford draft. Scott argued the analysis was flawed. Henry Ford Health responded to last year’s hearing, saying it was not aware the study was being discussed and was not given an opportunity to weigh in or testify at the congressional hearing.

Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher of the McCullough Foundation was invited to testify at last week’s Michigan hearing alongside Henry Ford Health. Chairman Luke Meerman said he invited Henry Ford Health to have “bookend time” to open and close the hearing, but it did not choose to participate.

The film tells the story of an unpublished study that was conducted by the Henry Ford Health System from 2017 to 2020 by evaluating data from 18,468 children born between 2000 and 2016. Approximately 16,500 received one or more vaccines while nearly 2,000 received none. After adjustment, the study showed a 2.5-fold higher risk of a chronic health condition among the vaccinated. Kaplan-Meier estimates showed 57% of vaccinated children had at least one listed condition by age 10, compared with 17% of the unvaccinated. Henry Ford later said the study authors decided not to submit the paper for publication because it failed to meet internal standards.

Hulscher described the original adjusted models, then the raw counts his team published in a peer-reviewed reanalysis of the unpublished draft. All 22 chronic-condition categories measured in the research appeared in higher proportion in the vaccinated group. There were zero cases of several conditions in the unvaccinated cohort, including ADHD, brain dysfunction, diabetes, behavioral disabilities, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and others. Hulscher explained that the study shows an association, but does not prove causation.

The committee played a video of senior author Dr. Marcus Zervos from the ICAN film. Zervos said he would “put it out just how it is,” but he didn’t want to “suffer what McCullough did.” Dr. Zervos explained he was reluctant to publish the study because he feared he would lose his job.

Rep. Rhett McDonald questioned whether the study was truly long-term if unvaccinated children were only followed until age 3. Children were followed for as long as they were in the Henry Ford system. The vaccinated cohort had a longer median follow-up than the unvaccinated cohort, about 2.7 years compared with about 1.3 years. The 57% versus 17% figures are Kaplan-Meier estimates at ten years, not counts of every child followed until a tenth birthday. Hulscher explained that Henry Ford conducted sensitivity analyses at one year, three years, and five years among children still enrolled at those marks. At each interval, the association between vaccines and increased chronic health conditions remained statistically significant.

A young Michigan mother named Sydney was also invited to speak during the hearing about the pressure she received at the hospital to give her newborn infant the hepatitis B vaccine. She was 22 years old when she gave birth to her baby at Corewell Health and was pressured by the staff to give her newborn baby the vaccine after signing the form to decline the shot. Sydney told the healthcare workers that she and her husband would consider giving their child the vaccine later, after discussing it with their pediatrician.

“They argued with me and made me defend myself over and over again in this decision,” she said. “I did not have hepatitis B. She would not be in any situation in the near future to ever have hepatitis B, and the hepatitis B shot was only followed for safety for 5 days. And I did my research and knew this going in. Many mothers I am close with, who have done similar research, have also had similar experiences in the birthing unit.”

The mother further explained that her cousin’s son was taken out of the room after he was born and given the hepatitis B vaccine after the mother declined. Sydney said she and her husband did not let the staff take their newborn girl out of the room because they didn’t trust that the medical staff wouldn’t give their child the vaccine.

“When I was closing my eyes for the first time since giving birth, they indeed tried to take my little baby girl out of the room,” Sydney said. “Over five times, I would get up after just giving birth–in the worst situation you can possibly be in–and I would get up, and I would grab her. They became annoyed and said they needed to continuously check her over and over and over again. I said, ‘That’s fine, that they can do that with me and my husband in the room.’”

Sydney described the frustration she and her husband felt, and they decided they would leave the hospital to later complete the rest of the tests with their pediatrician. According to her testimony, the medical staff at Corewell threatened to call Child Protective Services (CPS).

“Too many mothers have to defend themselves on a matter that hasn’t been fully resolved,” Sydney said. “Do more vaccines produce healthier outcomes? Why, without a definitive answer to that question, well-founded in long-term, evidence-based medicine, do mothers have to be subjected to such hostile situations? So many moms are fearful to speak out because they are attacked, mocked, and threatened into silence because the narrative in pediatric medicine is that more vaccines equal healthier outcomes. But anyone who is watching this hearing or has done their research on the matter knows that that is not true.”

Meerman closed the hearing by saying it is a “travesty” that Dr. Zervos felt so much pressure to not publish the study. He suggested the state of Michigan could find money to pay Henry Ford to complete the comparison study between vaccinated and unvaccinated children that they want to conduct. “Fix it,” he said. “To me, there’s enough studies out there that give us question marks about what’s going on that we should all want this study done tomorrow.”