Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. There are some side effects when getting a vaccine, like mild fever or soreness, but vaccines don’t cause or have a child develop autism. Parents choose not to vaccinate their children due to overlapping concerns about safety, distrust in pharmaceutical companies and healthcare systems, and a desire for "natural immunity." 

Autism is understood to be a neurodevelopmental condition influenced largely by genetics and early brain development, not by vaccination.

The myth that vaccines cause autism can be traced back to a small study conducted in 1998 by the now discredited former doctor Andrew Wakefield. The study described 12 children in the United Kingdom (UK) who had developmental delays and who had also received the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Eight of these children had already been diagnosed with autism when the study took place. Wakefield was stripped of his medical license, and his work was labeled “an elaborate fraud.”

Since that time, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to investigate any potential link between vaccines and autism. No environmental factor has been studied as extensively in as many people, and no link has been found between vaccines and autism—whether considering vaccine ingredients or the body's immune response to vaccines.

People would come up with anything to not vaccinate their kids because they believe their child will develop some sort of health condition or development delays, but a lot of health conditions can be prevented by getting a vaccine. Even with the overwhelming evidence that vaccines are safe and effective, some parents still decide not to have their children vaccinated or to delay vaccinations. But this is extremely risky — vaccine-preventable diseases like measles are still around. An unvaccinated child who gets a preventable disease could get very sick or even die, as could other people around the child.

Because of vaccines, we don’t have measles, mumps, rubella, small pox and polio, the list goes on. Vaccines keep us safe. Risking your child’s health all because you think it's going to make your child autistic really shows how much research you did before having kids. A lot of illnesses or health conditions can develop before the baby is born or can appear later in life because of family history. 

If you were vaccinated as a kid and you haven’t been diagnosed with autism, I would have to say that vaccines aren’t the problem. Autism can be passed down and if you have multiple kids, there’s a chance that you will have a child with autism.  It's the parents that create the genetic makeup a child has. 

Vaccines are there to prevent illnesses and not create new ones.