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Vaccines are one of the most successful scientific breakthroughs and most cost-effective health investments in history. With the exception of safe drinking water, vaccine is widely considered to be the greatest medical invention of modern civilization. But vaccination rates of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine plummeted and infection rates of measles and mumps skyrocketed when the world started to believe vaccines caused autism.
Why did people think that childhood vaccines such as the MMR vaccine cause autism? It all started with the 1998 publication of a fraudulent research paper in the medical journal The Lancet that claimed that autism spectrum disorders were linked to the MMR vaccine. The paper has since been completely discredited, the researcher lost his medical license, and the paper was retracted. The British Medical Journal published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud. Yet this vaccine – autism story still lives on in anti-vaccine blogs and continues to be shared every now and then in social media.
No question has been the subject of more large scale, rigorous examination than the issue of vaccines and autism and this "vaccine–autism connection" is one of the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years. In the current era of “alternative facts”, fake news is everywhere. Unless you live under a rock, every day we are all barraged with stories that simply defy reality, whether it be a political news or assertions that vaccines cause autism despite a plethora of evidence year after year that states otherwise.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a list of common concerns about vaccine safety, and there are literally three headings on that page that all say the same thing: (1) Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism. (2) There is no link between vaccines and autism. (3) Vaccine ingredients do not cause autism.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) compiled a 21-page list of studies with links to the publications to allow parents and all those who give or recommend vaccines to read the evidence for themselves.
With recent events involving vaccines and people who support conspiracy theories about vaccines, it is always a good time to remind everyone of the breadth and robustness of scientific evidence on the topic.
The people who do not believe in vaccines tend to be more vocal than those who do. If you believe in vaccines, can you speak up? You might just save a life.
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