Something That Makes Me Angry.

There is a group of people who don't vaccinate their children on the grounds that vaccinations and autism are linked. These people, while possibly having the best of intentions, are hurting their children, and possible causing other parents to do the same. Worst of all, they are doing this because of a false corollary and a fake study. I understand that parents with children who have autism struggle with something that I can hardly imagine. I know that it must be difficult, but blaming something like vaccines may cause more harm than good. Evidence for the vaccine - autism link is taken from two faulty sources. The main source of this claim was a study done in the UK in 1998 that showed that vaccines cause autism in children without autism. This, of course, caused some people to freak out and stop taking children to get vaccines. Since then vaccine curable diseases have gained more traction. The worst part? It was all fucking bullshit. And it was completely retracted in 2010. The study was fabricated by a group of lawyers who wanted to file a class action lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies. There has not been another credible source of this information since.

 The second bit of evidence that people who claim that vaccines cause autism is the corollary that since the start of vaccinations as normal thing for parents to do, the cases of autism have risen. When doing research on any topic there is a major pitfall that too many people fall into. Just because two sets of data change in a similar way over a similar amount of time, does not mean that they are even related. Example: The amount of pirates in the Caribbean has diminished over the past few hundred years. During this time the average temperature of the ocean has risen. Does this mean that a lack of pirates caused global warming? Fuck no. they correlate, but other then that, they don't interact at all. Correlation is not causation. The correlation between autism and vaccinations looks OK, until you look at the reasons for it. The definition of what autism is has changed a lot in the past 50 years, so many more people have been diagnosed with it in that time. At the same time new vaccines for diseases began to be developed, so of course the rates of people getting vaccinated went up. The two are related on that growth rate, but are not causally linked.

 The main reason this argument makes me angry is that it is based on lies. I understand they want to help, but looking at the data they cite shows that their argument is faulty. All they are doing is spreading misinformation, and people may suffer because of this movement.