Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

What if someone came to you and told you that the sky was green or that up was down—that everything you believed in was based off of a lie, that what you believed in was wrong?

This is what many parents of children with autism are dealing with in light of Brian Deer’s Sunday Times investigation that led to the decision by the Lancet medical journal to retract Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s research linking the MMR vaccine with autism. People like Jenny McCarthy and Nancy Alspaugh-Jackson who are very vocal autism advocates are fighting the news of this revelation. They are holding to their beliefs unmoved by the recent information released over the last few days.

Drastic change in beliefs occurs only when there is sufficient evidence or a desire to see things in a new light because what was once believed has ceased to provide answers. Imagine Galileo telling others that earth was not the center of the universe, that because of the evidence he found with his telescope that he knew for a fact that we rotated around the sun. The people of his time were forced to reassess their beliefs and put in perspective what that meant. Some were able to change their minds others condemned him for it. Since 1998, a common belief held by parents of children with autism was that the MMR vaccine caused autism in children who already had an immune deficiency. This information was finally something tangible to shed light on the causes of autism. It answered the how and why.

While I believe that Dr. Wakefield findings were fraudulent, it does not necessarily take away proof that there is a correlation between autism and vaccines. It only takes away which specific vaccine is linked with autism. The specificity empowered parents—instead of being afraid of all vaccines one was singled out. It illustrated concrete proof, not vague connection. Dr. Wakefields research has been discredited but it has not ended the autism vaccine debate. Recently, the US government conceded a court case in which vaccination contributed to the onset of autism for a nine year-old girl who had a predisposition to mitochondrial disorder. This provided evidence that some children are more at risk than others in getting autism from vaccines.

If we can agree that vaccination might cause autism in some children than we need a new approach to how we take care the health of our children. Keep them safe from both disease and autism. Its not one or the other.

We need to stop the blanket approach in how we deal with vaccination. Its not unreasonable to screen children who may have compromised immune systems before they’re vaccinated, or to space out vaccinations so children are receiving fewer at a time. What we can’t do is completely stop all vaccination— that would create an epidemic of diseases.

What should be taken from Deers and Dr. Wakefield is that ideas change. There is no absolute truth but we need to believe in something. With out that there isn’t hope.

We must also recognize however that the unwillingness to change beliefs is detrimental to progress. We rotate around the sun.