A Shot at the Truth

Last week, a special court ruled that parents of autistic children were not entitled to compensation from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. The ruling was in response to three cases, each of which involved parents who claimed that their children’s autism was brought on by the measles vaccine in the measles, mumps, and rubella immunization most children receive, or by the combination of the measles vaccine and thimerosal. Although we sympathize with parents of autistic children, we appreciate the court’s decision and hope that it will cause parents who are considering not immunizing their children to think twice.

There is currently a growing movement to link the MMR vaccine with autism, yet the scientific community has already widely dismissed the claim that the vaccine causes autism. The original connection between the vaccine and autism was raised in a paper published in the British journal, The Lancet. After it was discovered, however, that the main author of the study had received funding from British trial lawyers seeking the evidence he eventually produced, 10 of the paper’s 12 co-authors redacted their contributions, and the scientific community as a whole discredited the study. As such, it is unreasonable for parents to continue to blame MMR for a disorder that scientists have rather conclusively proved is unrelated.

Most unfortunately, the scare perpetuated by believers in the link between autism and the MMR vaccine has led to a sharp decrease in the number of children receiving the vaccine. Currently, every state has a law that mandates vaccination before a child enters public school. States do, however, provide exemptions for medical, religious, and philosophical reasons—and parents have started to request exemptions on the basis of flawed science.

Parents who invoke such exemptions as a response to the tenuous evidence and specious reasoning that promote a claim debunked by scientists are truly doing a disservice to all children. The incidence rate of measles has sharply risen over the past few years; more people were infected from January to July 2008 than during any other time since 1996. In the United Kingdom, despite the subsequent denials of the myth relating the MMR vaccine to autism, the percentage of children being immunized for MMR has dropped from 90 to 82 since the original study. Correspondingly, children are now more at risk for the contagious diseases that the vaccine typically prevents. Parents who choose not to immunize their children thus endanger other people’s children; this disregard for others’ health is unreasonable, given the lack of benefits of forgoing immunization.

It is clear that the word of the scientific community is not enough to convince parents that immunizing their children will prevent—not cause—further problems. The government therefore has a duty to combat this misinformation by spreading verifiable scientific knowledge regarding the benefits of the MMR vaccine. Bereft of sound evidence that the vaccine causes autism, the movement to link the two must be more publicly disputed.

The court did well to realize that, as of yet, there is no verifiable link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Indeed, the leaders of the movement to associate the two would be much better off if they used their energy and resources to research other, more viable potential causes for the disorder, rather than to keep believing in falsehoods.