Buried Evidence: Vaccines, SIDS, and the CDC’s Silence

Why it matters that no one’s talking about the known risks

Apr 22, 2025

Vaccines Don’t Cause SIDS, or Do They?

The CDC insists there’s no relationship between vaccines and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Multiple research studies and safety reviews have looked at possible links between vaccines and SIDS. The evidence accumulated over many years do not show any links between childhood immunization and SIDS.

But the CDC no longer links to those studies on its current webpage. I found them on an archived version of the page, and they don’t support the CDC’s claim that vaccines don’t cause SIDS and that the shots are not linked to SIDS. Some even mention SIDS as a reported event after vaccination. Meanwhile, DTaP manufacturers still list SIDS in their official package inserts as an adverse event. If there’s really “no relationship,” why scrub the links? And why does the fine print still flag SIDS? What aren’t we being told?

What the Research Studies Reveal

Let’s take a look at some of the “multiple research studies” found under the heading “Related Scientific Articles,” which the CDC provided in its now archived page to ostensibly back up its claim that vaccines don’t cause SIDS.

The IOM Review

“Immunization Safety Review: Vaccinations and Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (2003)” by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). This study began with a definition of SIDS:

SIDS is defined as “the sudden death of an infant under 1 year of age, which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history. . . .”

Could vaccines be causing SIDS?

The committee reviewed data on any relationship between SIDS and the individual diptheria [sic]–tetanus–whole-cell pertssis [sic] (DTwP), DTaP, HepB, Hib, and polio vaccines, and specific combinations of vaccines or any combination of vaccines.

They stated that the DTwP (whooping cough) vaccine cannot be blamed because they determined that in 1991 and 1994, and there have been no new analytical studies since then.

… the present committee finds no basis for a change in the prior conclusion that the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between DTwP vaccine and SIDS.

Is the IOM Correct?

Literature beyond published studies, which the IOM committee uses as the basis for its determinations, indicates a relationship between vaccines and SIDS. (Note that DTwP and DPT are the same vaccine.)

In 1982, NBC aired DPT: Vaccine Roulette, a documentary that helped spark national debate over the safety of the pertussis vaccine. I was reminded of the documentary in A Midwestern Doctor’s recent Substack. He was discussing vaccine safety and the autism debate, but the documentary (below) included a point about SIDS (at about 4:10) that stood out. Journalist Lea Thompson noted that the Physician’s Desk Reference, prepared by vaccine manufacturers themselves, listed the pertussis component of the DTP shot as having a possible link to SIDS. In other words, the concern was acknowledged in the official literature decades ago—before the IOM’s 2003 report.

The association between DPT and SIDS had been made many times prior to the IOM 2003 review. I wrote about some instances in a previous post, including the Tennessee Cluster and Vera Scheibner’s findings.

Some lots of Wyeth’s DPT vaccine had caused SIDS cases in Tennessee and were referred to as the Tennessee cluster. Rather than working to prevent such tragedies from happening again, the company instructed that “its distribution centers carry a large variety of lot numbers in order to obscure future “hot lots.”

Researcher Dr. Viera Scheibner and her husband, Leif Karlson, a biomedical engineer, who developed an infant breathing monitor called Cotwatch, discovered that the monitor’s alarm was triggered after vaccination (specifically DPT and oral polio vaccine (OPV), which were given at two months).

The monitor was used by new parents who were referred to Scheibner and Karlson by doctors and researchers investigating SIDS. Scheibner wasn’t looking for a vaccine connection, but she found one. Infants’ breathing patterns repeatedly dipped into stress and alarm phases after vaccinations. Scheibner tried to raise the alarm.

She found that episodes of stress and abnormal breathing spiked in the days after vaccination, often peaking on days two and five. These patterns weren’t subtle, and they didn’t align with random chance.

She found that vaccination consistently triggered a sudden spike in breathing alarms among infants. By examining computer-generated records, she was able to pinpoint critical points within these patterns and compare them to documented cases of sudden infant death. Around 1990 this led her to an unexpected discovery: a clear connection between vaccination and SIDS. Her analysis also suggested that younger infants succumbed more quickly to the toxic effects of vaccines.

When she and her husband tried to share their findings, some researchers looked at them with “hatred, she recalled (at about 5:30) in her talk (below).

You can't have a monitor and not talk to pediatricians and we told them. We thought they would be pleased when we tell them, “Now we have it! Babies have alarms after vaccinations. . . . So you should look into that. And they were not pleased at all. Some of them look at us with hatred. . . .

She said that some even told her (at about 6:10):

Vera, we are not that stupid. We all know that vaccines are killing babies.

She included her information about SIDS in her 1993 book, “Vaccinations: 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent an Assault on the Immune System.” In 2004, the results of her SIDS data linking DPT and OPV (but primarily DPT) to SIDS were published in the Journal of the Australasian College of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine.

The third chart in Figure 3 is of 41 actual randomly listed deaths after DPT and OPV. It can be seen that the distribution of deaths closely follows the dynamics of the flare-ups of stressed breathing of babies one and two after the administration of the DPT vaccine.

She also referenced previous researchers who identified SIDS with DPT vaccination, and whose data substantiated her findings. One of those was Dr. William Torch.

Interestingly, Torch (1982 and 1986) independently also made the same observation as Leif Karlson and myself: increasing numbers of deaths with the increasing interval from the vaccine administration, increasing number of injections and increasing age. He wrote (Torch 1982) that “Preliminary data on the first 70 cases studied shows that 2/3 had been immunized within 21 days prior to death... In the DPT SIDS group 6.5% died within 12 hours of inoculation, 13% within 24 hours, 26% within 3 days, and 37%, 61% and 70% within 1, 2 and 3 weeks respectively. Significant SIDS clustering occurred within the first 2 to 3 weeks of DTP #1, 2, 3 or 4, The age range in the DTP group was 59 days to 3 years…”

In 1991 the DTaP (acellular pertussis) vaccine was introduced, and by 1996, the DPT (DTwP) vaccine was phased out completely. The IOM committee (pp. 7-8), after saying that the evidence wasn’t sufficient to accept or reject a causal relationship between the DTaP and SIDS, absolved the DTaP of any association with SIDS based on their contention that DTaP is a less problematic vaccine than the DTwP, which they claimed wasn’t associated with SIDS.

The epidemiologic evidence regarding the relationship between SIDS and receipt of DTaP vaccine consists of one uncontrolled observational study. The committee concludes that the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between DTaP vaccine and SIDS. However, given that DTaP is associated with fewer adverse reactions than is DTwP, and that the Immunization Safety Review: Vaccinations and Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy constituents of DTaP are relatively refined compared with those of DTwP, the committee found no reason to suspect that a causal relationship might exist between DTaP and SIDS when the evidence indicates that none exists with DTwP. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, they dismissed a potential DTaP-SIDS link based on its earlier dismissal of DTwP, even while admitting the data for DTaP was lacking.

Regarding the other vaccines the IOM reviewed, the committee concluded that they have no way of knowing if there is or isn’t a connection between them and SIDS.

The committee concludes the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject causal relationships between SIDS and the individual vaccines Hib, HepB, OPV, and IPV.

What the committee did conclude is that multiple vaccines given at the same time don’t increase the risk of SIDS.

The committee concludes that the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between exposure to multiple vaccines and SIDS.

This IOM review, by its own admission, thus failed to find proof that vaccines don’t cause SIDS and are not linked to SIDS. They surmised that the DTaP doesn’t, and they didn’t have enough information to make a determination about the others.

SIDS Reports Weren’t Considered Unexpected

“Safety Surveillance of Diphtheria and Tetanus Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis (DTaP) Vaccines,” Pediatrics. 2018;142(1). pii: e20174171.

This 2018 paper by Moro and co-authors is another paper that the CDC had referenced to back up its claim that vaccines don’t cause SIDS and are not linked to SIDS. The authors concluded that they had found no unexpected adverse events.

No new or unexpected adverse events were detected. The observed disproportionate reporting for some nonserious vaccination errors calls for better education of vaccine providers on the specific indications for each of the DTaP vaccines.

However, the conclusion is misleading. By stating that there were no unexpected adverse events, the authors were able to ignore the SIDS deaths reported to VAERS after the DTaP vaccine, which are discussed in the body of the paper:

Death Reports
In total, 844 deaths were reported to VAERS after receipt of DTaP vaccines. Death certificates, autopsy reports, or medical records were obtained for 725 (85.9%) reports (‍Table 3). Among these 725 reports, the most frequent cause of death (350 of 725; 48.3%) was sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Most SIDS cases (217 of 350; 62.0%) occurred among male infants; the predominant age group was infants <6 months of age (318 of 350; 90.9%). (Emphasis added.)

Labeling 350 SIDS deaths following DTaP as “not unexpected” raises serious questions about what adverse outcomes are considered acceptable—or worth investigating.

Safe Sleeping But Not a Word About Vaccines

“Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. SIDS and Other Sleep-Related Infant Deaths: Evidence Base for 2016 Updated Recommendations for a Safe Infant Sleeping Environment.” Pediatrics. 2016;138(5). pii: e20162940.

The above paper, another of the CDC’s “Related Scientific Articles,” doesn’t mention vaccines at all, but cites multiple other factors such as “supine positioning, use of a firm sleep surface, room-sharing without bed-sharing, and avoidance of soft bedding and overheating,” as associated with SIDS and recommends a “safe sleep environment.”

What do the “Related Scientific Articles” Really Convey?

The CDC’s choice to group these papers under a vague heading rather than claiming they support its conclusion allows plausible deniability while giving the impression of scientific backing.

What about vaccine package inserts?

The Infanrix (DTaP vaccine) package insert lists Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as a reported post-marketing adverse event, even though it tucks it under a broad category called “General Disorders and Administration Site Conditions.” It’s listed right alongside fatigue, injection site induration, and injection site reaction. You wouldn’t spot it unless you were looking for it.

I found that there had previously been a different, more telling, version of the package insert. Section 6.2 - Postmarketing Experience of the June 2019 version of the insert included a notable sentence: “These events are included either because they are serious or because of a plausible causal connection to INFANRIX.”

By June 2020, however, that line disappeared. The vaccine package insert stated — as did the June 2019 version, that the events are reported voluntarily from a population of an uncertain size so frequency can’t be estimated and that a causal relationship can’t be established—standard language, but without the prior note that some of them might plausibly be linked to the vaccine. By removing the acknowledgment of plausible connection, the insert now reads as if there were no conceivable link, despite listing SIDS among the events.

Section 7.1 - Concomitant Vaccine Administration notes that Infanrix was also tested alongside several other vaccines—Hib, pneumococcal conjugate, hepatitis B, polio, and even a second MMR dose. So, even if a child died from SIDS or had any other adverse event in a clinical trial, how could they isolate the vaccine linked to it?

Pediarix vaccine package insert (another DTaP vaccine) reported in Section 6.1 - Clinical Trials Experience two SIDS deaths among recipients in clinical trials, before the vaccine was ever licensed. One SIDS case also occurred in the comparator group.

The comparator group was not a placebo group; the children in it received other vaccines similar to those in the study group. So the fact that one child in the comparator group also died of SIDS doesn’t rule out vaccine involvement—it may simply mean a vaccine the comparator group received could have contributed to the outcome. There was no unvaccinated control group.

The insert claims the SIDS rate was lower than background rates in Germany and the U.S., but again not comparing it to the background rate for unvaccinated children.

Time for Honesty

The CDC has been expecting readers to trust that, if the agency says vaccines don’t cause SIDS, it must have the data to prove it. But the CDC hasn’t provided the full picture to the public. Manufacturers, for their part, continue to downplay or obscure any association between SIDS and their products. And parents have been gaslit for decades, told these vaccines are unquestionably safe and that any injury or death following them is pure coincidence. The truth? The data doesn’t appear to be on their side.

And, if the risks were known decades ago, and the agencies and pharma still can’t say so, what else has been hidden from the public?

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The information contained in this article is for educational and information purposes only and is not intended as health, medical, financial or legal advice. Always consult a physician, lawyer or other qualified professional regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition, health objectives or legal or financial issues.