Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

 

In this video, Jim Moody, a lawyer, says that we know that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism; we just do not “have a body count”. He argues that the government makes its citizens take these vaccines and then claims that these vaccines to not cause autism. Lynn Koegel of the Koegel Autism Center, on the other hand, has researched the causes of autism and she says that she knows the vaccines are not causing autism. Many people also believe that the mercury preservative that used to be in vaccines is another cause of autism. Koegel argues that if this was the case, then when the mercury was removed from vaccines in 1999, the rate of autism would have decreased. Unfortunately, this was not the case and instead, even more children are being diagnosed with the developmental disorder.

So the question still remains: do vaccines cause autism? On one side, you have Jim Moody arguing that the side effects of the MMR vaccine are still unknown and its safety has not been demonstrated because scientific studies that validate the safety of the vaccine schedule have never been done (unlike Koegel who says that too much time has been put into this). He has 31 studies to show that there are dangers, but it is argued that none of them show that vaccines are linked to autism. This supports Lynn Koegel’s claim that “study after study after study has come out showing that it’s not the cause of autism.”

Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez7FOi-s9dY&feature=player_embedded, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2336894/?tool=pmcentrez