Over the last decade, autism has gone from a rare and misunderstood condition to a disorder that may affect as many as 1.5 million Americans. Without a clear explanation in sight, parents and doctors have worked tirelessly to pinpoint the cause of autism, but the answer remains elusive. Are vaccines the missing link?
Although vaccines such as the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) have been theorized to cause autism, research has failed to show any link. The MMR vaccine was proposed by Wakefield et al. in a 1998 Lancet article as a possible cause of autism. However, subsequent studies showed that autism rates went up while MMR vaccination rates remained the same and that the timing of autistic symptoms was the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated children.The majority of the authors of the Lancet study later retracted their findings. Furthermore, cases of measles in unvaccinated children have gone up after some parents have chosen to defer the MMR vaccine following publication of that Lancet article.
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