Andrew Nardi
Vaccines and Autism
I would just like to start out by saying this claim is preposterous. The articles that do show a correlation between early life vaccinations and ASD (autism spectrum disorders) are sparse at best. Proponents of the notion use confirmation bias to try and skew the statistics in their favor. As it is, autism spectrum disorders are incredibly hard to diagnose until social interactions are much more common. With that being said, some autism spectrum disorders can be detected as early fourteen months. Another point I would like to bring up is the difficulty in directly connecting the vaccines because there is a long time between the time a child receives the vaccines and the time that autism is diagnosed. Another thing that is troubling is there is no evidence to decipher what actually causes autism and autism spectrum disorders let alone a single direct cause. There was a certain study done on twelve children in 1998 by a doctor by the name of, Andrew Wakefield, which showed evidence of a correlation between Autism and vaccines. However, in 2011 the article was completely discredited due to the fact that Dr. Wakefield had falsified the data, as well as the results of the study rendering the conclusion moot. Autism is a big deal for parents as well as children, and it makes sense that people are trying to put the blame on something but vaccines are not the culprits.
http://www.modernalternativemama.com/blog/2011/3/1/do-vaccines-cause-autism.html
http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/autism/vaccines-autism1.htm
http://www.naturalnews.com/027178_autism_vaccines.html
I think people always try to find a cause for the effect, and with autism it is hard to pinpoint what the causation(s) is/are, which is why vaccines are blamed because there has been a minimal (if any) correlation found between the two. With the belief that vaccines are behind autism is harmful to the development/research and funding because it puts vaccines in a negative light when they are quite the contrary.