Evidence against ‘Vaccines=Autism’

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Quick, I have an active debate between my uncle (anti-vaxxer) and my mom (she’s been reading some stuff about GMOs causing autism). Right now, it seems she’s just fueling his belief and succumbing to it.

Active as of post time, Thursday, January 4th, 2018

The evidence is pretty overwhelming n this one, but like climate change, people don't want to be bothered with facts. I read an article on it recently that showed how using facts to argue these things does not work in most cases. Convincing people to use vaccines by reminding them why they are necessary works much better.

The notion that vaccines cause Autism is a well-documented fraud which has been thoroughly debunked by the scientific community. It was posited by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in one paper in The Lancet in 1998...whose research was funded entirely by lawyers suing drug manufacturers. His "research" was categorically disproved, and he was found guilty of violations of medical ethics, scientific misrepresentation, and deliberate fraud, The Lancet retracted his paper, and he was struck off (lost his license to practice medicine) in 2010.
This is all well-documented fact; easily verifiable with 5 minutes on the search engine of your choice.
All of the cockamamie conspiracy theories to the contrary are complete bollocks.

If GMOs cause autism then why aren't autism rates higher in America, where there are GMOs, than in Europe, where there aren't?

For vaccines I don't think just repeating "there's no evidence" is likely to be an effective strategy. Obviously you'll need to bring it up, but perhaps you should first emphasise the benefits of vaccines, which prevent and even eradicate diseases and make it safe to travel to countries with deadly infectious diseases. Only then do you move onto "scientists have done lots of research into vaccine safety and haven't been able to find any risks, so if we stop vaccinating then we'll just make children sick".

You cannot argue with an illiterate idiot what has made up his mind.

Anti-vaxxers are like UFO people, "I want to believe". Non factual people who think what they feel is more important than facts.

Well, the debate that provoked my original post is long over, but it wouldn’t hurt to fill this thread up with plenty of stuff for the next person to find. Also, I’ll make sure I keep this stuff in mind the next time it’s brought up.

I believe the evidence is overwhelming that vaccines do not cause autism. That said alot of people have no interest in what constitutes as real or good evidence.
I have a nurse friend who had never seen Mumps in her ten years in the profession. That was until the MMR/ Wakefield scandal and all of a sudden it made a reappearence.

Ben Goldaches does a good job of covering the misconceptions and bad science surrounding the MMR scandal in his book Bad Science. http://www.badscience.net/

If people think we are autistic because of vaccines what they are really saying is that we are mutants, and not in the good X-Men type of way.

Simply put, if vaccines caused autism, then there would have been a pandemic of autism during the 1950s-1960s, when millions of people around the world were given the polio vaccine in mass campaigns.

Also, with that reasoning there, a group of 70-80 year olds would have a higher saturation of autistics among that age group.

Btw, what I hear from the anti-vaxxers is that only certain vaccines cause it. I think this is just a counter argument for when people bring up those mass vaccinations like what you mentioned.

There is no evidence that support the claim: 'vaccines cause autism'. It makes me angry when I hear someone say that vaccines cause autism. They don't want to listen to anyone else and are so aggressive that you just don't want to reason with them anymore.

I have found this:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/ ... -they-came

And even if his research wasn't falsified, didn't they change the MMR vaccine so that it no longer contained the substances that he claimed were causing Autism??


Oh man, I just accidentally clicked on a pro-vaxx site and read this:

"The Amish do not vaccinate, and have no autism."

The anti vaxxars often say things like “Where are the 50 something autistics” or “There were no people with autism when I was went to school”. At age 60 those statements do not do go down with me well at all.

Yet that could also support the genetic component idea, the Amish don’t usually marry and reproduce outside of the Amish community (I am in NO way saying “inbred”).

Possibly, but I have a hard time believing that no Amish have ever had Autism, especially with no sources to back such a lofty claim.