Vaccines Don't Cause Autism. Honest.
In 1998, the highly respected British medical journal The Lancet published a paper by the now-infamous Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield claimed to have found link between vaccinations and autism.
The paper was soon discredited, and the Lancet officially retracted the article. Investigation revealed that the paper’s author had been funded by a group of unethical British trial lawyers. The lawyers had unable to legitimately find the evidence they needed to sue pharmaceutical companies, so they had to resort to illegitimate means.
Nevertheless, the belief that vaccines cause autism has persisted in the public mind. Last week, a special federal court ruled that there is no creditable link between either the MMR vaccine or thimerosal, and autism. Even the defense attorney, who was trying to prove that vaccines cause autism, admitted that "It wasn't even a close case."
If the scientific evidence was not enough to convince vaccine conspiracy theorists, then a court ruling surely will not put a dent in their beliefs. Unfortunately, autism tends to become apparent at about the same age that most children receive vaccinations. The same could be said of other childhood experiences, such as being put in child seats, or eating solid food. However, vaccines have become the preferred scapegoat of choice for many parents.
It’s difficult to say exactly why the MMR vaccine and thimerosal have been singled out as the cause of autism. It may partly be because some parents feel that vaccines are foisted upon them by “doctors.” Some parents clearly feel that vaccination is an unnecessary procedure. And perhaps, alerted by the mass hysteria, the parents of a newly-vaccinated child will be watching him or her more closely in the days following a vaccination, and hypersensitive to autism indicators which they may have missed earlier.
For too many people, nothing a “doctor” or “government entity” could say will ever be taken as truth. To quote a homeopathic medicine blog, “This controversy is too hot for the government to allow the truth to be heard.” To others, there is no such thing as “enough proof.” To quote one autism blogger on the topic, “Has the autism/MMR link been scientifically disproved? Absolutely not!”
It baffles me that people will trust the word of some stranger on an internet forum – or, worse, Jenny McCarthy – JENNY MCCARTHY, of all people - over scientific evidence, but there you have it.
Don’t get me wrong – autism is a terrible, terrible thing. It destroys lives, both literally and figuratively. And the rise in autism over the last ten years is definitely cause for concern and study. However, parents who focus on the bogus vaccine link are only making matters worse. Every time that public pressure results in another study of the vaccine link, that’s one more group of research resources which isn’t being used to find the real cause.
It’s not vaccines. It’s not thimerosal. That supposed link is actually a hoax, perpetrated by unethical trial lawyers.
Get over it, and let’s all move forward towards finding the real cause.
Comments
Hi Ever heard of the LEAD
Hi
Ever heard of the LEAD debate? Lead is fine for children. Nothing budged this attitude until organolead was a poison in petrol but not kids. Then all of a sudden it disappeared.
Ever heard of the NUCLEAR debate? The leukemia around the nuclear power stations was too high to be due to uranium and plutonium leaks. Turns out that all those workers employed at these places bring leukemia to the workplace. Nuclear plants are so safe you can eat your meals and drink your coffee on top of the reactor. The only exception being England, France, USA, Russia, Iraq et al when certain reactors went into melt down.
Ever heard of the PESTICIDE debate? All those people that get brain cancer after soaking their heads overnight with organophosphate. Just a coincidence again. and those Mad Cows well it was the food that they had been fed with for 200 years that caused all the bother.
Ever heard of thimerosal? Turns out at the February 2009 Special Master judgement that thimerosal is actually less toxic than water. Been taken out of some vaccines but is actually good for improving your IQ.
Amazing facts but "TRUE" to BIG PHARMA and USA REGULATORS. And BIG FAT LIES to those not on the PAYROLL.
I call it PROPAGANDA and it worked for HITLER too.
You're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right. There have always been people who hold tight to their beliefs, in the face of all reasonable evidence.
Just the other day a man informed me that DDT is in fact harmless, but it was "suppressed" because it was cheaper than the other pesticides which the chemical companies wanted to push. No volume of evidence to the contrary, no matter how reputable, would ever sway him. The poor sod!
I'm no fan of the pharmaceutical companies. But in this case, I have to reluctantly admit that they're right. There is no shred of evidence connecting vaccines and autism. (Beyond the anecdotal, which isn't evidence at all but simply a story someone tells you.)
The vaccine scare doesn't even pass the most basic plausibility test. 10 million doses of the MMR vaccine are given to children every year. However, in 2005 there were only 110,000 new cases reported. Furthermore, autism was first identified as a condition in 1938, whereas the MMR vaccine was not developed until 1971.
I'm happy to reverse my opinions in the presence of evidence. But there isn't any. (Please note, "it's being suppressed" is not evidence.)