Nicole Shanahan

Nicole Shanahan

Philanthropist, attorney, former VP candidate, and self-described “autism mom” Nicole Shanahan is Hero of the Week for her efforts to keep a spotlight on the connection between vaccines and autism.

In early February, Shanahan announced that her foundation would be making $3.5 million in grants for researchers to publish review papers summarizing the published evidence linking vaccines and autism.

For many years, writer Jon Rappoport has described how the behavioral label of “autism” is used to obfuscate a child’s medical deterioration after vaccination. Shanahan appears to share this perspective—her grants focus on inflammatory gut-brain medical conditions “co-occurring” with autism.

In her first 2024 interview on the presidential campaign trail—with Sage Steele, a former sports anchor booted off ESPN for objecting to the network’s Covid vaccine mandates as “sick” and “scary”—Shanahan told Steele:

“[A]utism, as a word, I find very unhelpful. It is the diagnosis describing the behaviors of something else…. [Y]ou realize that you are having to split your role as a parent into two roles, one, working with the behaviors, and two, working with the underlying medical condition…. [O]nce you understand that these are two paths that parents are having to do concurrently for their child, you can then understand the healthcare needs…”

On social media, Shanahan also has described how the vaccine-autism link is a taboo topic—a “no go”—among progressives. After her daughter’s diagnosis, she stated, “I had an enormous amount of grief, but then set in the confusion because I was not allowed to consider the fact that the shot caused anything…. [N]o one around me could be someone I could trust with even this notion that perhaps the shot caused an adverse reaction.”

Shanahan’s grant announcement, coming out just before RFK Jr.’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary, is a brave signal that she has no intention of remaining silent on such an important issue.