A medical sociologist explains why some Americans believe the dangerous myth that vaccines cause autism.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. walks past President-elect Donald Trump during a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena Glendale, Ariz. on Aug. 23.These unfounded attacks on vaccines pose serious threats to public health, risking the spread of preventable diseases and misinformation. Medical scientists have made it clear:. Yet, many Americans share Kennedy’s skepticism and question the importance of early childhood vaccines.
So why does this myth persist? The reason isn’t because people are uninformed or want children to get sick. It is because for many, the idea of a vaccine-autism link gives them hope.studying parents of autistic children, practitioners, and researchers who are convinced that early childhood vaccines cause autism. Like Kennedy, they believe that children are born non-autistic and then madeThis belief tragically portrays autistic people as having been born"typical" but then"broken.
And this is not the only time Trump has made such comments. “If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100,” he once. In other words, measuring the true rise of autism is complicated and not based on biology alone. A vaccine-autism link is attractive because it would simplify the challenge at hand.
If vaccines cause autism, then we would have a prevention strategy and new directions for treatment research—but vaccines do not cause autism. Continued research into this imaginary relationship would be wasteful and is not likely to satisfy vaccine skeptics. Moreover, the randomized, double blind control trials that vaccine skeptics have demanded arebecause they would require child participants to “receive less than the recommended immunization schedule.
The vaccine-autism link is more than a myth—it is a wish. For some parents of autistic children, a vaccine-autism relationship is tantalizing because it nurtures the hope of recovering from autism. These parents recognize that the U.S. is not going to make space for disabled people. In their calculation, their chances of reversing vaccine injury with unsupported, experimental treatments are better than convincing policy makers to care for disabled people.
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