Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

Hi everyone, Leyla this week! So for this post, I thought we might delve into the topic of autism as promised in our intro blog. My mother's a clinical psychologist, so I've been hearing about this topic--and autism in general--for a while. Autism is a disorder that strikes very early in life, and it affects social cognition and interaction. Most often, it is accompanied by mental retardation, but the two don't go hand in hand, which is a common misconception.

There's been a lot of controversy in the news lately about the recent discovery that the study linking autism and vaccines was apparently invalid. According to the British Medical Journal (BMJ) the study's author, Andrew Wakefield, knowingly tampered with the results he garnered in his study--possibly due to unsavory ulterior motives. One may expect that parents across the world may now breathe a sigh of relief; however, it appears as though Andrew Wakefield's study has caused some long-lasting damage to families world wide.

So, a bit of background information in case you didn't know the details; in 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British surgeon, published an article in The Lancet claiming that there was a link between autism and the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. After the BMJ study was released, Mr. Wakefield, who incidentally had his medical license revoked in May, continued to defend his study, backed by a surprising number of parents whose children were afflicted with autism. These parents included Jenny McCarthy and JB Handley, an activist interviewed on CNN's Parker Spitzer (I'm still pretty shocked by his interview, which you can watch here).

Despite the news that Wakefield's claims were invalid, recent polls reveal that 18% of Americans still believe that there is a link between MMR and autism, while 30% aren't sure what to believe. While 92% of American children are still fully vaccinated, there was a shocking number of measles cases in 2008, and, according to the CDC, over 90% of these children hadn't been vaccinated. This was 10 years after Andrew Wakefield's study had been published. Coincidence? I think not.

Now for my opinion, which would best be described like this: if I walk over to you, and you blink, was it because I walked up to you or because you would have blinked anyway? In other words, if a child is vaccinated at a young age--before autism is detectable--and signs of autism spring up shortly afterwards, was it because of the vaccine, or did the child have autism all along? It's hard to determine if a child has autism before the 2 year mark. This is where the misunderstanding begins.

If you've watched that J.B. Handley interview (go watch it now if you haven't yet!) you might be wondering about the "recent" SUNY Stony Brook study Mr. Handley keeps mentioning. Upon further inspection, I learned that the study uses information garnered between 1997 and 2001, prior to the BMJ study refuting the link between autism and vaccines.

So, in the end it's every parent's individual decision. The world is clearly still distrustful of vaccines, but it has to be decided whether the benefits of having one's child vaccinated against deadly diseases collectively outweigh the fear of autism that still lies in many parents' hearts.

References

CNN Wire Staff. "Medical journal: Study linking autism, vaccines is 'elaborate fraud'." CNN Health. January 6, 2011.

Gardner, Amanda. "Nearly half of Americans still suspect vaccine-autism link." USA Today. January 23, 2011.