Anyone who has young children, or knows people with young children has probably heard the vaccination debate. A rather hot button issue in our society, many people believe vaccinations can cause autism or other learning disabilities, but where did this assumption come from? In 1998, there was an article published in The Lancet claiming a causal relation between the MMR vaccine and autism. This article received lots of attention and is considered the reason people began to believe that vaccines caused autism in children.
I turned to JustAnswer to see what one of the medical experts had to say about the relationship of vaccines and autism. Dr. Chip said the following, “There is no evidence to support the learning disabilities or the ADHD or the autism/Asperger’s scares you read about. Here’s the definitive link from the CDC.”
Now, I realize there are a number of people who don’t want to take the CDCs word when it comes to the health of their children so I did a little digging of my own. Turns out, The Lancet article was actually retracted due to fatal flaws in the testing performed. Subsequent studies performed in 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2012 have show no relation between the MMR vaccine and autism. Usually the worst thing about vaccinations is a sometimes apparent flu-like syndrome and pain in the area of the vaccination but nothing more.
Want to learn more about vaccines and the controversies that have surrounded them? Upworthy has a great 3 minute video you can watch here: https://www.upworthy.com/got-3-minutes-heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-vaccines-and-their-controversy
Final verdict? This myth is FALSE.
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