After Trump’s victory, Robert Kennedy lies and says he was never anti-vaccine

Vaccines do not cause autism

The main hypothesis accepted today for the cause of autism — or ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) — is a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Misinformation linking vaccines and autism is based on fraudulent research. The origin of the disinformation is an article published in 1998 with false information. The preliminary study published in the scientific journal The Lancet, by doctor Andrew Wakefield, analyzed 12 children who showed signs of autism and severe intestinal inflammation. Eleven of them had supposedly taken the MMR vaccine, as they would have traces of the measles virus in their bodies.

The doctor acknowledged that he was dealing with a mere ‘hypothesis’ and that the children did not have the measles virus. Wakefield linked the manifestation of autism in children to vaccination, but acknowledged that it was a hypothesis. His thesis was that vaccines could cause gastrointestinal problems, which would lead to inflammation in the brain — and, perhaps, autism. He omitted, however, that no measles virus was found in the children.

Conflict of interest of the doctor. In 2004, a journalistic investigation revealed that Wakefield had been paid by lawyers interested in lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies to manipulate information. Furthermore, before the article was published, the doctor had requested a patent for a measles vaccine that would compete with the triple viral vaccine — which he mistakenly associated with the cause of autism.

Wakefield lost his right to practice medicine. In 2010, he was judged unfit to practice his profession by the United Kingdom’s General Medical Council for his unethical, irresponsible and misleading stance. In the same year, the magazine Lancet retracted the publication of the article. Wakefield’s study is considered a fraud.

Later studies found no relationship between the vaccine and autism. In 2015, research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association analyzed 95 thousand American children, all with siblings, and concluded that there is no link between autism and vaccines. Another survey, released in 2019, analyzed more than 650,000 Danish children and concluded that of the approximately 6,500 ASD diagnoses, none had signs of a relationship with the MMR vaccine.