Vaccines are at least more safe than the alternative, an epidemic
This is an important matter. One can understand that parents whose children became autistic seemingly as a result of vaccines need answers. One can understand that parents whose children need to get their vaccines would be concerned and fearful.
It is for this reason that the autism advocacy organization SafeMinds must be commended for co-sponsoring a scientific study to determine ‘once and for all’ whether vaccines cause autism. The results are in and it seems rather conclusive that vaccines do not cause autism. Newsweek reported the following in an article titled “Anti-Vaxxers Accidentally Fund a Study Showing No Link Between Autism and Vaccines.”
Between 2003 and 2013, SafeMinds provided scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, the University of Washington, the Johnson Center for Child Health & Development and other research institutions with approximately $250,000 to conduct a long-term investigation evaluating behavioral and brain changes of baby rhesus macaques that were administered a standard course of childhood vaccines. (The National Autism Association, another organization that has questioned vaccine safety, also provided financial support for this research.) The latest paper in the multiyear project was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS). In it, the researchers concluded that vaccines did not cause any brain or behavioral changes in the primates.
Read the entire article as well as the published paper. Science shows that vaccines are unlikely to cause autism. Assuming that there is still a very minor chance that it does in an extremely small portion of the population, the benefits, including the benefits to anyone that may become autistic outweighs the risk to the individual and to the population at large. That risk is an epidemic. Small epidemics have been blossoming throughout the country because in some areas in the U.S., third world countries have higher vaccination rates. Let’s not play with our lives and our children’s lives because we refuse to accept the science.