The Everlasting Misconception of “Vaccines Cause Autism”
SRINIDHI VANGALA – Measles was once declared eradicated in the United States due to a highly effective vaccination program. However, when the assertion of “vaccines cause autism” became prevalent, significantly fewer parents were vaccinating their children against measles, causing the disease to re-emerge and take the lives of many all over the world as unvaccinated U.S. residents began traveling internationally. Measles has now become one of the leading vaccine-preventable diseases which can cause death.
So, how did we go from not having a single case of measles in the United States for at least twelve consecutive months to now having hundreds of cases annually?
It all started from a 1998 peer-reviewed medical article written by a British surgeon, Andrew Wakefield, and it consisted of a study that he conducted with only twelve children, most of which he selected himself. A true medical study includes at least hundreds of people who volunteered to be part of the study, and the people in it are randomized to represent a wide variety of races and genders. Instead of conducting the study with the true intentions of bettering the world, Wakefield was being paid by lawyers who were suing over alleged vaccine injuries. This study suggested that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine may be a liability to behavioral regression and pervasive developmental disorder in children.Not only that, the children in his study were the children of the parents suing, and he treated them unethically. Discovery of Wakefield’s questionable research practices raised concerns that led to the revocation of Wakefield’s medical license, and ultimately, the retraction of his study from the British Medical Journal.
Unfortunately, his assertion of “vaccines cause autism” is still prevalent to this very day.
More and more people suffer from measles each year. In 2004, there were only 37 cases of measles in the U.S., but by 2014, that number rose to 667. In January of the following year, an outbreak in Disneyland caused 111 cases. While the overall number of cases would decrease from 2014 to 2015, the U.S reported 375 cases in 2018, the second largest number of yearly cases of measles since it was eradicated in 2000. In a short span of time, the U.S. had gone from not having a single case of measles for at least twelve consecutive months to having nearly 3,000 cases since 2001.
Measles could have still been eradicated in the U.S if it were not for parents choosing not to vaccinate their children against the disease and instead believe in Wakefield’s assertion of “vaccines cause autism”. The link between vaccines and the eradication of a disease doesn’t only pertain to the measles vaccine. You don’t hear on the news about many of the diseases that we have been vaccinated against since we were children. For example, “Thanks to widespread vaccination, the United States has been polio-free since 1979,” and smallpox has been eliminated in the U.S. since the 1950s.
But the elimination of a disease doesn’t have to stop at measles or polio. Any disease can be prevented from spreading if there is a vaccine available for it. The most obvious example would be COVID-19. If enough people, not only in the U.S. but also worldwide, were to get the COVID-19 vaccine, cases would be significantly less than what they are now, and we would see a continued decline in cases throughout the following months and years eventually leading to eradication. However, vaccine hesitancy is still prevalent, with the assertion of “vaccines cause autism” still being a widespread concern despite its lack of validity.
Copy Editor: Ishan Vaish
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