Yet Another Scientific Study Shows No Link Between Vaccines And Autism
Will this finally be the study that gets antivaxxers to see there’s no link between the MMR vaccine and autism?
It’s 2019, and we can say, with confidence, completely backed by science, that vaccines do not cause autism. Yet, somehow, that ridiculous rumor persists. People still say vaccines are dangerous, and deny possibly life-saving inoculations to their kids out of pure fear. Yikes.
Since some people are more likely to listen to dangerously misguided celebrities or politicians than their doctors, all we can do is keep hammering them with good, scientific evidence. So, antivaxxers, here’s yet another study showing there’s no link at all between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.
This time, researchers in Denmark followed 657,461 children born between 1999 and 2010, using a population registry to track which ones had received the MMR vaccine. The researchers also looked at risk factors for autism, including age of the parents, diagnosis of autism in a sibling, preterm birth and low weight at birth.
95 percent of the kids received an MMR vaccine, and 6,517 of them were diagnosed with autism. That’s just under one percent. This study shows pretty conclusively that there is no link at all between the MMR vaccine and autism. There just is not.
What may be even more important is that this study showed the MMR vaccine doesn’t increase the risk of autism in kids who already show other risk factors.
“The study strongly supports that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children, and is not associated with clustering of autism cases after vaccination,” the study’s conclusion reads. “It adds to previous studies through significant additional statistical power and by addressing hypotheses of susceptible subgroups and clustering of cases.”
According to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, this new study now makes 18 scientific studies, from seven countries on three continents, following hundreds of thousands of children, that all show vaccines have nothing to do with autism.
“I think it’s fair to say a truth has emerged,” Offit told CNN.
Just for a comparison, do you know how many real, peer-reviewed, scientific studies have suggested that there is a link between vaccines and autism? Zero. One oft-cited study, published by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in 1998, was retracted when it was discovered that Wakefield had been paid off by a law firm that wanted to sue vaccine manufacturers, and his published results were faked. Wakefield subsequently lost his medical license.
And yet, the world is currently seeing a pandemic of measles, with cases of the disease popping up in countries where they hadn’t been seen for years. The resurgence of a virus that had previously been so well controlled prompted the World Health Organization to name vaccine denial a Top 10 Health Risk for 2019.
“I think we are at a tipping point,” Offit said. “I think people need to realize that a choice not to get a vaccine is not a risk-free choice. It’s a choice to take a greater risk, and unfortunately right now, we are experiencing that greater risk.”
There’s one simple takeaway from all of this: Vaccinate your kids. Thank u, next.
