"Two years old – two and a half years old - a child, a beautiful child went to have
the vaccine and came back and week later got a tremendous fever, got very very sick, now
is autistic."
Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how people perceive the world
and interact with others, and its prevalence has dramatically increased over the last fifteen
years, with it occurring in 1 in 150 in the year 2000, but 1 in 68 in 2012.
Now we've long known that the primary cause is genetics.
To name but a few examples, studies of twins have found that if one twin is autistic, then
the other has a 60 to 90% chance of also being autistic; studies of siblings have found that
if one child is autistic, then their subsequent siblings stand an 18.7% chance of also being
autistic; and studies have found that males are two to five times more likely to be autistic,
than females.
However, genetics doesn't explain the deeply worrying increase in prevalence.
But what does, at least to a very large extend, is our capacity and willingness to diagnose
the condition, rather than just labelling people intellectually disabled.
In fact, many experts are convinced that this fact alone accounts for the increase, but
other experts disagree – they are convinced that something else (an environmental factor)
is also contributing to the increase, but they don't know what… what they do know,
however, is that it's not the MMR vaccine.
This, is Vaccines Cause Autism – Debunked.
The assertion that vaccines cause autism was first made in 1998, when British surgeon Andrew
Wakefield and eleven other co-authors published a paper for the peer-reviewed medical journal,
The Lancet.
Within, Wakefield asserted there is a strong correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism,
and suggested that parents avoid the MMR vaccine as a protective measure.
,Naturally, this caused major concern among scientists and the general public alike, and
it lead to many enormous studies being conducted with the aim of confirming Wakefield's findings
– but none of them did.
Not one – zero.
No matter the number of children studied, the methodology used, the location of the
study, or the agenda of the authors, not a single study verified Wakefield's finding,
and this resulted in his paper being completely discredited.
What's more is that in 2011, an investigation conducted by the British Medical Journal revealed
that Wakefield was being paid by lawyers who were suing over alleged vaccine injuries,
and that many of the parents of the children within his study were themselves suing…
which is a massive conflict of interest, and one that he conveniently didn't declare.
Further still, Wakefield had insisted that his study was approved by the institutional
review board, but as it turns out, it wasn't.
In fact, he not only didn't have permission for his study, he gravely abused the children
under his care by carrying out extensive invasive procedures (which on occasion required three
adults to hold down a child), and because of this, Wakefield was entirely discredited
as a scientist, and he lost his medical license altogether.
Now some would say that this is a somewhat satisfying end to Wakefield's fraudulent
behaviour, but unfortunately, it isn't.
To many conspiracy theorists, Wakefield's story was (and still is) seriously delicious,
because it can be easily spun in to a narrative in which Wakefield exposed the evil scientists
and governments of the world, and that they reacted by discrediting his paper, disgracing
him as a scientist, and producing hundreds of fake government-funded studies to combat
him (even though most studies aren't funded by the government).
Now this might sound bizarre to you and me, but this is the conspiracy theory… people
genuinely believe that Wakefield is victim and that every government and every scientist
is unanimous out to get them.
So, let's step back a bit and elaborate on some of the larger studies that I briefly
mentioned before – just how convincing and overwhelming are they?
Well, to begin, in 2001 a study investigated over 10,000 children from California from
1980 to 1994, and found a staggering increase in autism by 373%, but a comparatively very
low increase in MMR vaccine coverage, being just 14%, which, by itself, strongly suggests
that the two aren't related, because if they were, a correlation would be much more
obvious.
Moving on, in 2002, two massive studies took place, one in Denmark that investigated over
537,000 children born from 1991 to 1998, and the other in Finland that investigated 535,000
children between 1982 and 1996, and both of them found absolutely no association between
autism and the MMR vaccine… that's a million children investigated by these two studies
alone… which is way more than enough to discredit Wakefield's fraudulent assertion
that was based on just 12 children.
Now there are many, many more studies I could bring up, but at the risk of boring you, I'll
mention just one more within this video.
In 2012, a systemic review (or a study of studies), evaluated five randomised control
trials, one controlled clinical trial, 27 cohort studies, 17 case-control studies, five
time-series trials, one case cross-over trial, two ecological studies, and six self controlled
case series studies, which overall involved 14,700,000 children, and found no correlation
between the MMR vaccine and autism… none…
Seriously… we literally have one fraudulent and discredited paper that illegally investigated
12 children, and whose authors were being paid by lawyers wanting to find a connection
between autism and the MMR vaccine, against thousands upon thousands of peer-reviewed
papers that have legally investigated tens of millions of children from all over the
world and have found no link between autism and the MMR vaccine whatsoever…
And it's because of this that authorities such as The National Autistic Society have
publically stated that "There is no link between autism and the MMR vaccine.
We believe that no further attention or research funding should be unnecessarily directed towards
examining a link that has already been comprehensively discredited.
Instead, we should be focusing our efforts on improving the lives of autistic people
and their families."
And I couldn't agree more… nor say it any better.
And so, to recap, those who maintain that the MMR vaccine causes autism are the many
studies mentioned throughout this video, believe that every scientist and every government
is in on a massive conspiracy, or / and they have one hell of a confirmation bias – because
they are completely under-valuing the mountains of peer-reviewed evidence against their beliefs,
while extremely over-valuing the tiny amount of… well, fraudulent lies that support their
beliefs…
Look, I get it, we all get it, we want to protect our children and it's natural and
right to have wanted to investigate this link, but to continue to ignore the mountains of
evidence to the contrary and to keep sinking money and resources into searching for a link
that very obviously isn't there, is not only wasteful, it's deplorable.
Some environmental factor may be contributing to autism, but it isn't the MMR vaccine,
and someone needs to get this through to the president of the United States.
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