Do vaccinations cause autism?
The research is clear. Vaccines do not cause autism. More than a dozen studies have tried to find a link. Each one has not found any association between vaccinations and autism.
MMR vaccine controversy
The debate began in 1998 when British researchers published a paper stating that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine caused autism.
The paper itself was later officially labelled as ‘fraud’ by the UK’s medical regulator (General Medical Council, GMC); but it triggered a lot of debate over the safety of the vaccine which continues to this day.
The study looked at only 12 children, but it received a lot of publicity because at the same time, there was a rapid increase in the number of kids diagnosed with the condition.
The paper’s findings led other doctors to do their own research into the link between the MMR vaccine and autism. At least 12 follow-up studies were done. None found any evidence the vaccine caused autism.
An investigation into the 1998 study also uncovered a number of problems with how it was conducted. The journal that published it eventually retracted it. That meant the publication no longer stood by the results.
In 2010, the GMC declared that the paper was not only based on bad science, but was deliberate fraud, with falsifications by the head researcher. Investigators found that a lawyer looking for a link between the vaccine and autism had paid the lead author more than £435,000 (equal to more than a half-million US dollars).
