Vaccination and concerns about autism.
Thursday, May 15th, 2008Bad astronomy has a good write-up on the supposed link (or lack thereof) between autism and vaccinations.
I just can’t make this any clearer. Vaccines do not cause autism. Study after study has shown this, in multiple ways. The removal of the MMR (mumps-measles-rubella) vaccine in Japan did not lead to a decline in the number of cases of autisms diagnosed; instead the number of children falling in the autism spectrum increased.
I looked into this alot when my daughter was going through some of her vaccinations and came to similar conclusions. I’m all for research into the cause of autism and studies done on vaccinations and their safety, but this has been done. Its been looked into time and time again, and the results are conclusive. Sadly, there has already been damage done by the one highly questionable study that sparked alot of this as well as general claims of “toxins and evils” in vaccines…
And there is a chilling side to this. Vaccines are among the greatest achievements in human history. This is not hyperbole. Millions upon millions of lives have been saved by vaccines. Smallpox is gone. Polio is gone. A vaccine has been developed to prevent HPV, saving millions of women from the horrors of cervical cancer.
If vaccinations decline, then we will see an increase in mumps, measles, rubella, whooping cough (pertussis), and many more terrible afflictions… problems that are ultimately completely curable. This is stone, cold fact. Worse, these problems are far more severe in children.
Update: Respectful insolence has provided their own summary of the ‘autism epidemic’:
[...] the apparent increase in prevalence observed over the last two decades can be explained largely by increased awareness and diagnostic substitution. There is no autism epidemic.
