Autism and vaccination
I know that there are all sorts of people on my friends list that are already married or about to get married, and are thinking about having kids. It's important that those people hear a message about concerns that vaccines could contribute to the onset of autism.
A remarkable study, authored by 13 scientists, supported a link between the mandatory MMR vaccine and autism. This, in turn, has sparked a growing movement of concerned parents, hoping to spare their children the risk of autism. Many states now allow parents and children to opt out of vaccinations- not only on religious grounds, but also in recognition of parent's desire to protect their children.
This study was remarkable for a few reasons. It flew in the face of established orthodoxy and challenged entrenched viewpoints. It made a difference in hundreds of lives.
It was also full of shit. Its IRB application contained falsified and incomplete information. The biological samples analyzed were contaminated, but they might've gone ahead with the paper anyway because they were bought and paid for under the table by lawyers party to a suit against vaccine producers. Ten of the authors retracted its conclusions. The hundreds of lives it touched were through measles epidemics, which would be unheard-of in this day and age if it weren't for the pockets of "vaccine skeptics" that left their children vulnerable to disease.
The link seems valid on its face: lots of people get immunized when they're toddlers, and then shortly thereafter show symptoms of autism. If I were a parent trying to understand why my child had autism (and didn't know that post hoc ergo propter hoc was fallacious thinking), maybe I'd believe that, too. But it's a coincidence. People start to show autism symptoms when they're toddlers whether they've been immunized or not. If the link really existed, we'd expect to see jumps in the population's rate of autism shortly after there were jumps in the population's rate of immunization. No such relationship was found. To be clear, this is not just an example of one paper versus another.
The
vast
weight
of
scientific
evidence
lies
against
a
link
between
the
MMR
vaccine
and
autism.
So to new parents and future parents- please don't risk your kids' or future kids' lives (and the lives of those they socialize with) on thoroughly debunked pseudoscientific bullshit.