A Healthy Heresy: Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism

According to a study done by Public Health Reports, of the parents who delay or refuse vaccinations for their children 57% said their reason for not vaccinating their children was fear of autism (Levs 4). Since the speculation of a causal relationship of vaccinations and Autism began the world has seen some of the most threatening outbreaks of diseases that would have been preventable with the use of vaccines ("The End of the Vaccines Cause Autism Myth." 2). Is it the vaccines causing the problem, or the overprotective parents that are endangering their child and many other people’s children? Parents who do not trust science for vaccinations continue to trust science for other ways such as “to …show more content…
Some doctors such as Andrew Wakefield, a world-known surgeon and researcher, claim to have found the link between vaccines and autism. In The Lancet Dr. Wakefield states, “In eight children, the onset of behavioural problems had been linked, either by the parents or by the child's physician, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination” (Wakefield 2). Other scientist and researches were not able to accept Wakefield’s research without further study. Those compiled studies were analyzed in an article published by the The Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics and the research points out that “…studies have consistently failed to identify a cause-effect relationship between thimerosal and autism” (Hurley, Tadrous, and Miller 7).
The most persuasive argument for vaccinations and autism is that there is no correlation between the two. Some may argue with fervor that there is a solid connection between them, but most cases that claim vaccinations are the cause of autism have found fraud, coercion and bias to have played a part (Novella 3). Some people may say that we do not have the evidence to go either way on the argument and further testing is needed to determine, but experiments and meta-analysis have continually shown that there is no connection between vaccinations and