Mothers and fathers of children between 12 and 15 months old have heard rumors and false reports that the MMR vaccine causes autism when administered to children. MMR is a hazardous reality to those who go unvaccinated, and the link between autism and the MMR vaccination has been entirely fabricated. As some teens mature and emerge from high school looking to start families, they must be aware of the dangers of autism, but also weary of the alternative. Those who choose to skip the MMR vaccination for their children endanger themselves as well as those around them.

Autism rates are growing at a disturbingly rapid pace. The number of reported cases of autism in the United States exploded from 7,000 in 1999 to 33,000 in 2009, a growth of over 400% within the last ten years.

And with the ever-expanding number of cases being reported, many worried parents
look to blame some quick scapegoat for their child’s sudden behavioral regression as a toddler. Several scientists at the National Autism Association blamed an additive preservative to the vaccination called “thimerosal” for the skyrocketing rates of autism. However, when thimerosal was taken out of the vaccine formula, rates continued on the same rapid pattern of growth.
If the problem isn’t with the additive, then it must be with the vaccination itself. Right?
In 1997, Andrew Wakefield published a study in which he claimed a causative relationship between the MMR (mumps, measles, rubella) vaccination and the outset of autism in formative childhood years. Wakefield claimed that the administration of the vaccine would inflame the child’s digestive tract, allowing unspecified and unabridged toxic substances into the bloodstream, a process which he said was the cause of autism.

Since the study was published in the late 90’s, this far-out theory has gained startling momentum--enough to cause MMR outbreaks of such magnitude in Britain that they hadn’t seen since before the introduction of the vaccine. Worried mothers often choose to ignorantly fear autism rather than to fear measles, mumps, or rubella; all diseases whose
prominence many parents are too young to remember.

Before vaccinations became popular in the United States, MMR was a frightening series of diseases that led to other life-threatening complications such as pneumonia and encephalitis.
In the past, 20% of unvaccinated children who contracted MMR were hospitalized and 1 in 400 children died as a result.

But the choice is not between dooming their child to autism or MMR; Wakefield’s theory has been proven wrong. The bottom line is that there is no proven link between autism and childhood vaccinations. If not vaccinations, what then accounts for the dramatic rise in autism cases? And how could all this controversy arise from a single, fraudulent study?

Autism is a condition with symptoms that manifest when a child reaches its first year of life, as the child’s development begins to regress. Regular childhood vaccinations take place between 12 and 15 months of age. Wakefield’s study lazily linked the sudden onset of autism at the child’s first birthday to necessary vaccinations which take place around the same time.
The increasing rate of autism cases is almost certainly related to better methods of detecting autism. Also, the popularity of Wakefield’s false claims might be attributed to social conditions in Britain in the 1990’s. Britain introduced the vaccine in 1988, 16 years after the United States had done so. The British Isles were still living in fear of whooping cough, and quickly came to refer to growing cases of autism as an “epidemic.”

Wakefield released his study at a time when parents were afraid of autism, quick to believe in a theory that provided an explanation as to why their child had suddenly began to regress after a perfectly normal first year.

Know the signs of autism. Graduating high school students intending to start families
need to be well-informed about the symptoms of autism. There is no link between the MMR vaccination and autism. So one can choose to believe the hoax and forgo important vaccinations, but in doing so they expose their neighbors, peers, and friends to the very real dangers of MMR.