7 'Controversies' That Are Total Bullsh*t
6. Vaccines Cause Autism
Vaccines don't cause autism.
The paper that is mostly responsible for the autism hype, and one that is still cited by many anti-vaxxers, was by Andrew Wakefield back in 1998, and is the only paper published in a respected scientific journal to ever make the link. The only trouble is that the paper was completelyfraudulent, Wakefield was convicted of professional misconduct and was booted off the medical register.
Now, I don't know about you, but that would ring a couple of alarm bells that the dude probably couldn't be trusted.
Since then, the link between vaccines and autism has never been proven and, what's more, has been actively disproven time and time again.
The thing is, there are perhaps some things about vaccines that we need to continue to work on. A tiny proportion of people who receive them will have a fatal allergic reaction, which is tragic, but this number is estimated at just 22 people per year and still has nothing to do with autism.
People are so frightened of autism these day, because it affects a relatively large proportion of kids and appears to be on the rise (although we'll deal with that later). However, people no longer fear the diseases that vaccines prevent, even though they killed people in their millions, for one simple reason: vaccines work.
But, they will not continue to work if people stop vaccinating their kids and, rest assured, if this happens then we will see the return of many deadly and virulent diseases that we have spent decades eradicating.