Vaccinations & Autism: Correlation or Causation

By: Jayden Lyon

On September 3, 2014 Donald Trump made a misleading claim in a tweet on his social media Twitter account that suggested that Vaccines given to infants and small children were to blame for the cases of Autism that were starting to emerge. With Trump throwing around statements that include ,“I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied.” and “..vaccines are just as bad as ebola and need to be stopped!” it begs to question just how much the now current presidential candidate knows about the science behind vaccines and how they actually work and what happens to the body when a vaccine is administered. Even before this statement was made by the presidential nominee this idea had been making the rounds throughout the scientific community with many believing that vaccines were the cause of spikes in Autistic cases without out any reputable proof to backup their claims. With the help of social media and characters such as Trump who tend to believe such extreme claims and express their opinions often lead to false beliefs being spread throughout the country with this particular one putting infants and children in danger of contracting “extinct” diseases from the new drive to keep kids vaccine-free, putting their lives in danger.

Twitter Post from Donal Trump regarding his views on vaccinations and autism. 3 Sep 2014. 

Do these claims of vaccines causing Autism and other handicaps in children have any merit? Are we putting children at risk when we give them all of these vaccines or are they more at risk when they are not given these injections?

According to studies done by the National Academy of Sciences US with administering vaccines to infant rhesus macaques monkeys, “No behavioral changes were observed in the vaccinated animals, nor were there neuropathological changes in the cerebellum hippocampus, or amygdala. This study does not support the hypothesis that thimerosal-containing vaccines and/or the MMR vaccine play a role in the etiology of autism.” These studies were conducted using recommended pediatric vaccine schedules from the 1990’s and as recent as 2008. The vaccines were administered to the infants then their behavior and neuropathology was examined over the course of their lives. Three brain regions found to exhibit changes in brains with ASD were found to have no differences from those of unvaccinated infants.

One of the main vaccines that people tend to link to ASD is the MMR vaccine. (Measles–mumps–rubella vaccine) However, in 2015, the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health published an article discussing another study done testing the theory that the MMR vaccine caused ASD by taking children who have had the MMR vaccine with those that had or did not have an older sibling with ASD as parents were less likely to get the vaccine if an older child had ASD. According to their study, “MMR vaccine was not associated with ASD in the younger siblings of children with ASD. Indeed, there was a trend towards MMR vaccine being protective: the relative risk of ASD for one dose of MMR vaccine at 2 years was 0.76 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.67–1.20) and for two doses compared with none at 5 years was 0.56 (95%CI 0.31–1.01).” There was no significant increase in risk for a parent to give a child the MMR vaccine if an older sibling had developed ASD and they could find no link to prove the idea that MMR would lead to ASD.

MANDATORY VACCINATIONS?

What about other countries around the World? There has been an increase in the rate of ASD diagnosis throughout the world which has lead many to believe that vaccines are still to blame considering the amount of vaccines required and the idea that an infant immune system can easily become overwhelmed. However, according to study done by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Division of Infectious Diseases, twenty epidemiologic studies have shown that neither thimerosal or MMR vaccines cause ASD. This conclusion was gathered from a number of studies done in the countries of: Denmark, Sweden, Canada, United States, United Kingdom. All of which found no link between the vaccination of children and the rise in ASD diagnoses. They contributed the spike in diagnoses to the broadening of diagnostic criteria and increased awareness.

In 2000 there was a study released that suggested a relation between the administration of the MMR vaccine and Inflammatory Bowel Disease which would lead to regression in children. This study has been proven false after many secondary studies began to show no link between MMR and IBD. A article from Pediatric Drugs summarizes these revoking studies along with other studies that have, instead, shown the benefits of MMR vaccinations. “Subsequently, a considerable body of research has accumulated which has failed to find a link, and there is now convincing evidence showing no link....The evidence shows that MMR vaccine is not only effective but very well tolerated.” Even now there continues to be mounting evidence that proves that there is no link between MMR and the onset of ASD. Parents need to know the truth to not only protect their kids but the children around them.

Further testing of the link between MMR by the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Mallman School of Public Health, Columbia University also showed no correlation with the onset of GI. “If MMR is causally related to either GI disturbances or AUT it should precede their onset...We found no differences between AUT/GI and GI control groups in detection of MV sequences in RNA extracted from ileal or cecal biopsy specimens.” This conclusion was made after examining the RNA of vaccinated and unvaccinated specimens. “MMR and GI complaints should precede onset of ASD. We found the age at the time of exposure to MMR relative to onset of GI problems in cases and controls and the temporal order of MMR administration, GI episodes, and AUT onset in cases to be inconsistent with a causal role for MMR vaccine as a trigger or exacerbator of either GI disturbances or autism.” The studies began to show that MMR did not have enough significant impact on the onset of GI as was previously proposed.

The claim made by Donald Trump has readily proven to be false. The idea that vaccines lead to the onset of ASD was blown up by the media specifically after the report by Wakefield which was later tested to be false itself and no real link between vaccines and autism were found. Many parents have been lead to believe that giving their infant children vaccinations will lead to them having regression and developing ASD, but in reality there is no evidence to support that. Maybe believe it is the immune system that can’t handle the immunizations, but even that idea has been proven false with the infant immune system fully capable of taking in the vaccinations to help protect from potentially deadly and contagious diseases. Parents need to come to the realization that vaccinations are there to keep their children healthy and keep them from getting deadly diseases of years past.