This petition is a demand for Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, to publicly issue a retraction of Drs. DeStefano, Bhasin, Thompson, Yeargin-Allsopp, and Boyle's 2004 study entitled, "Age at first measles-mumps-rubella vaccination in children with autism and school-matched control subjects: a population-based study in metropolitan Atlanta."

On August 22, 2014, Dr. Bill Thompson, Senior Scientist in the National Center of Birth Defects and Development Disabilities division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, let it be known that he worked in concert with the other authors of the study to manipulate data and bury the increased of autism in African-American boys receiving the MMR vaccine "on-time" according to the CDC vaccination schedule. The CDC has used the Atlanta study countless times in the past decade to deny the causation between the MMR vaccine and autism.

http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/study-focus-autism-foundation-finds-cdc-whistleblower-reveals-widespread-manipulation-1939179.htm

The CDC released a statement in which the agency admitted to the data omission, claiming that birth certificates were essential in gathering risk factor information such as race, birth weight, gestational age, and mother's education. Of these, only race is included on the official Georgia birth certificate, and that demographic information could have been provided by school records to which the authors had access. To address the revelations, Dr. Thompson released his own statement through his attorneys. He maintains that he is the person on video discussing scientific fraud with Dr. Hooker and that he and his co-authors did knowingly skew the numbers in order to suppress a strong association between MMR and autism for a subset of children.

UPDATE On October 9, 2014, a video was released by Autism Media Channel which explained further fraud revealed by Dr. Thompson involving this same study. The study authors, according to Dr. Thompson's recorded statements, deliberately withheld data implicating vaccines in autism risk for children later diagnosed with "isolated autism," defined as the absence of pre-existing developmental disorder. The original findings, which were manipulated then ultimately omitted completely, seem to corroborate the anecdotal evidence shared by thousands of parents who say they witnessed a regression into autism after their children were vaccinated.

As of October 13, the AAP and Pediatrics have refused to fully investigate this matter. They are satisfied with simply interviewing two study authors, neither of whom was Dr. Thompson, and not reviewing original data sets or the wealth of evidence held by Dr. Thompson (including handwritten notes from his supervisor, Coleen Boyle, that she made during intense meetings about how to handle the troubling findings).