More proof vaccines don’t cause autism
A decade-long study involving more than 650,000 children has once again confirmed what scientists have been saying for years: The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine doesn’t increase a child’s risk of autism. The myth linking the MMR shot with autism has refused to die, even though the small and flawed 1998 study on which it is based has been widely and comprehensively debunked. The “anti-vax” movement has gathered steam in recent years, leading to a surge in measles cases. There are currently outbreaks of the disease in Washington state, New York, and Texas, and 206 cases of measles were confirmed across 11 states in January and February this year—more than in the whole of 2017. The new study followed 657,461 kids born from 1999 and 2010 in Denmark, which has a free and voluntary national vaccination program. Overall, 31,619 kids remained unvaccinated. Later, 6,517 children were diagnosed with autism. The researchers found that the children who received the vaccination were in no way more likely to develop autism than those who did not, that the shot had no triggering effect on those more susceptible to the developmental disorder, and that there was no clustering of autism cases after immunization. Saad Omer, a professor of global health, epidemiology, and pedi- atrics at Emory University, says this was one of the largest-ever studies conducted on the MMR vaccine and autism. “The appropriate interpretation,” he tells The Washington Post, “is that there’s no association whatsoever.”