Q: What's all this I've been hearing about vaccines causing autism? Are they actually dangerous?
A: What you've been hearing, most likely, was more evidence of the complete lack of a connection between the two.
In February a special court designed specifically to compensate parents for the occasional side effects vaccines can produce (albeit extremely rarely) threw out three pivotal cases claiming vaccine-caused autism caused by vaccines.
George L. Hastings, Jr., one of the judges (or Special Masters, as they are called in these vaccines-only trials) wrote, The overall weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners' causation theories."" He called the supposed evidence ""unpersuasive on many different points"" and the physicians who advised the plaintiffs guilty of ""gross medical misjudgment."" Remember, this is no scientist or pharmaceutical hack, it's an outside observer not trained in science, and the standards for proof in these cases is considerably less than traditional court cases.
On top of that, Andrew Wakefield, the godfather of the movement and the first to find ""scientific"" evidence of a connection, was thoroughly discredited the same month. Not only did investigations by he Times of London prove he falsified his data, it also turned out he had massive conflicts of interest.
All this, of course, is in addition to over a decade's worth of reams of scientific studies and papers proving the lack of a link between autism and vaccines. The link arises from several anecdotes of parents watching their child develop autistic symptoms shortly after being vaccinated.
While at one point the fear of a link between the two may have made sense, the overwhelming evidence against such a link suggests it may simply be that the onset of autism symptoms coincides with the typical age of first vaccinations.
Unfortunately, there's a chance what you heard was instead last week's high-profile endorsement of these spurious claims on a high-profile Web site: Jim Carrey's ""The Judgment on Vaccines Is In???"" on The Huffington Post. Carrey, the funnyman behind Bruce Almighty, The Mask and Ace Ventura, has come out with equally vocal girlfriend Jenny McCarthy in this anti-vaccination cause célà ""bre, and The Huffington Post has in the past run numerous stories supporting these lies.
Carrey's claims range from simple misstated facts to blatant lies. He suggests that, since the special courts only technically ruled on three cases out of 5,000, the jury is still out on all those other cases. This, however, ignores the fact that those three cases were chosen specifically as the most credible - othe strongest cases supporting a link between autism and vaccines - oand they were summarily thrown out by the Special Masters.
What Carrey calls ""a huge leap of logic,"" the idea that all vaccines can be assumed not to cause autism, is in fact a scientific and now legal consensus by a huge majority.
You may wonder why your question is being answered so somberly: it's because this is serious stuff. People die because of these false claims. Little kids and babies die because of such celebrity pseudoscience.
Failing to vaccinate a child not only puts him or her at risk of potentially lethal diseases, but everyone around him or her as well (including those too young or ineligible to receive vaccines themselves). I am not exaggerating when I write that people like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy cause the deaths of children.
Of course, they don't see it that way. These anti-vaxxers, as scientists call them, think they are protecting children and their families from the pain of awful side effects like autism. Some, like the parents of stricken children trying to ensure the same doesn't happen to others, are understandable and if not quite commendable, at least sympathetic.
The most vocal contingent, which includes several actors and pundits but almost no scientists or doctors, led to moderate successes last year, decreasing the vaccination rate substantially in some places.
As a result, preventable flu and measles outbreaks took place in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Vaccinations are unbelievably safe. It's a scientific certainty that they don't cause autism, and failing to keep your kids immunized causes children to die. Campaigning against vaccines is campaigning for disease and death.
