MMR and Autism: The Truth

Kacy Morris

Meagan Knight

Colby Brower

Aleisha Hill

Brigham Young University-Idaho

Abstract

Due to many studies and suspicions raised about the possibility of the MMR vaccine causing autism, the authors have researched and come to the conclusion that because of all the failed attempts to prove that the MMR vaccine causes autism, the disease is not caused by the specific vaccine and the vaccine is therefore safe to receive.  The authors take the position that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism due to evidence found, but they offer opposing views to theirs and explain why those views are not acceptable.

               Keywords: MMR vaccine, vaccine, autism causes, autism, Therimosal, and Mercury.

Introduction

Everyone is born, goes to a school, gets a job, or is part of a program that requires him to have medical examinations or receive vaccinations to prevent diseases that could be picked up otherwise.  Because the entire population is involved in vaccines in some way, the suspicions that the MMR vaccine has caused autism relates to everyone.  For those who either firmly believe that the vaccine does cause diseases, such as autism, or have not received the vaccine because of the fear that it will cause autism in the future, they can know that what the vaccine is made of will not be what causes autism in their lives. If autism coincidentally does arise, it will be from some other contributing factor, not the MMR vaccine.

Background

Autism spectrum disorder is a range of neurodevelopment disorders that affect the development of the brain in social and communication skills, and occurs before the child turns three (NINDS 2009).  The cause of autism is unknown but many people believe it is due to unsafe vaccines such as MMR or thimerosal, a small amount of mercury that is found in some vaccines.  In the late 1960’s a man named Maurice Hillman decided to combine the measles, mumps, rubella shot into one vaccine called the MMR, which was released in the United States in 1971 and the United Kingdom in 1988 (Offit 2007). Since the 1930s, Therimosal, a mercury- containing preservative, has been used in vaccines and other products. Other than redness and swelling at the injection site, no other harmful effects have been reported. Therimosal was eliminated from vaccines due to precautionary measures (Therimosal).

Lines of Argument

*Extensive testing must be conducted to the vaccination prior to licensing it to for public use. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves and licenses the vaccines and continually monitors and test them for our safety.

*Vaccines that are optional have risks. These risks are close to none, but the chances of negative side effects are still there and vary from individual to individual, usually depending on their allergies.

*Of all deaths reported to VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) between 1990 and 1992, only one is believed to be even possibly associated with a vaccine. Each death reported to VAERS is thoroughly examined to ensure that it is not related to a new vaccine-related problem, but little or no evidence suggests that vaccines have contributed to any of the reported deaths. 

*There are some side effects of vaccines illustrated in these charts:

As parents find that their children develop diseases for no apparent reason, their minds seem to quickly conclude that vaccines are what could have done such damage.  Usually parents who come to this conclusion do not have evidence to back up their statement. The author of Vaccines, Arthur Allen, gives an example of this issue in his research:

Republican representative for Indiana, Dan Burton insisted that “unsafe vaccines” had caused his grandson to be autistic. Instead of doing his own research, he simply called the FDA, CDC, and NIH and accused them of “covering up associations of vaccines to disease” (Allen, 2007). There was no significant evidence involved in this instance, just strong accusations. The fact that Burton thought these companies would cover up something so prevalent in the lives of the entire human population is not exactly a strong argument considering those companies exist to keep us safe and healthy. Yes, they can be wrong sometimes. But Burton was quick to accuse of something that has been in the minds of many and continuously proven wrong. The representative also never specified which vaccines could have caused this disease in his grandson. He generalized all vaccines and implied that they were all harmful and produced negative effects.

Fraudulent Study linking MMR to Autism:  Andrew Wakefield published a study saying that the vaccine had caused damage to the intestinal lining of children, making harmful proteins enter the bloodstream and travel to the brain, resulting in autism.

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a fraudulent study linking the MMR vaccine to autism.  As a result MMR vaccination rates in the UK fell below the level of herd immunity and a disease that had once been declared under control in the UK was now declared an endemic.

Reasons why his work was determined fraudulent

*No scientist has been able to replicate his work

*He was paid a lot of money, by trial lawyers’ wanting to sue vaccine manufactures for vaccine injury, to do studies on autistic children

*He applied for a patent on a supposedly safer measles vaccine

Many studies have been done to see if vaccines really do cause autism and no association between MMR and autism have been found.  These studies include:

*Autistic children in the UK born after 1979 had their immunization data compared to the introduction of the MMR vaccine in 1988. 

*Children in Denmark born between January 1991 and December 1998 rates were compared between those who had received MMR and those who did not.  

*The UK showed that children with developmental disorders were less likely to have received the MMR vaccine before being diagnosed.

*CDC looked at immunization histories they collected from their education records and found that the distribution of children who had the MMR vaccine among children with autism were similar to other children.

*CDC looked at the association of the onset of autism in regression cases and the MMR vaccine.

*351 autistic children and 31 other children were screened to see if there was an association between the vaccine and their loss of social-communication milestones. 

After scientific evidence showed that MMR did not cause autism antivaccine activists shifted their focus to thimerosal, which is found in many vaccines, saying it was the cause of autism.  In 1999 thimerosal was removed from vaccines as a precautionary measure.  Studies that were done on thimerosal, and no evidence of a relationship was found, include:

*Infants who had received a vaccine containing thimerosal were tested and it was determined that their blood levels of mercury were below safe values, and the ethyl-mercury quickly left the blood stream.

*Thimerosal exposure was determined from electronic immunization registries, medical charts, and parent interviews. 

*In both Denmark and Sweden autism increased a lot after the discontinuation of thimerosal in 1992.

*Two groups of children were compared, one group received a vaccine containing a greater quantity of thimerosal and another group of children received a smaller quantity of thimerosal. 

Opposing Views

The opposing views to the argument that vaccines (specifically MMR) do not cause autism are still present in today’s society:

*The persisting opinion that vaccines because autism is often mislead but it cannot be disproved.

*Most sources that say that vaccines cause autism are slanted and biased, but there are a few reoccurring connections that cannot be ignored.

*Mercury is found in many vaccines. In studies performed on monkeys showed that this mercury is eventually stored in the brain and can cause the neurological dysfunction connected to autism.

*These mercury problems could also arise from genetic predispositions to not be able to detoxify their bodies of mercury.

*The last real problem that has had some connection is, due to the weakened viruses that make up vaccines, there could be certain individuals which cannot combat these viruses which, if they are not defeated, have been shown to produce autism symptoms.   

Conclusion

Those who develop autism, whether they have received the MMR vaccine or not, have developed the disease from some factor that is irrelevant to the vaccine.  Because vaccines are something that the entire general population is involved in, everyone should be informed of the facts and history regarding the MMR vaccine and its link to autism. Luckily, there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the vaccine causes any harmful negative permanent side effects.