Allie Langston
November 22, 2015
BIOL 1090 E Portfolio Assignment
Is There a Link Between Vaccination and Autism?
As being an American that was born in 1995, I was very intrigued by the two
opposing articles that I read pertaining to the use of vaccines containing the
preservative thimerosal in infants in the 1990s and autism. The research that has
been done was supposedly released and discussed at an isolated meeting in
Norcross Georgia. According to the article “Deadly Immunity” by Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. the findings that were discussed proved that the increase of mandated
immunizations in infants and small children had a direct correlation with the rising
cases of diagnosed autism in the U.S. and the government tried to cover it up.
In the article “Mercury Rising: Exposing the Vaccine-Autism Myth” by
Matthew Normand and Jesse Dallery they discuss the idea that there is no proven
link between the vaccine and autism just like there is no proven link between going
out in the cold with wet hair and getting the sniffles. They point out that there is a
potential for danger linked with the thimerosal, there is just simply no proof. In this
article they also mention the “Deadly Immunity” article and they say that even
though this article has its points, there is no proof mentioned in the widely spread
piece of text.
In “Deadly Immunity” the author states that that vaccines cause autism by
bringing up many studies that support that idea. Since eliminating vaccines is too
risky, the author suggests making the vaccines so that they are single doses and they
don’t need the added preservatives that make the vaccines lethal. This would be a
lot more expensive which is why the government added the preservative in the first
place, to be more price efficient. Although they mention a lot of numbers that sound
good, I can see why the opposing side would say that they have lack of evidence
since the numbers only support the authors idea instead of proving it. The opposing
side doesn’t talk numbers and they don’t have any proof either but they do make
good points against the “Yes” side. They also talk about how there are many of the
supporters of terminating vaccines are biased because they have a child that is
autistic and wants to think that they know the reason behind it.
I would have to see more evidence and do more research on vaccines
themselves to come up with a certain opinion of the issue. With reading the two
articles I think that while there has been a correlating pattern in recent years when
it comes to the number of autism cases and the number of vaccines issued, I believe
that this could just be a coincidence and that there are many elements that could
have caused the autism ratio in our population to increase. The experiment that
would help to eliminate the idea of it being a coincidence would be to stop
vaccinations completely and see if the autism numbers go down in the next decade.
Even though there is a Yes and a No side there is not a right and a wrong side.
Both sides lack evidence, but present their opinions in an organized manner and
they both made very many good points. They each do this in a different way and I
hope to learn new information on this topic soon. I plan on doing some further
research.