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.