It's Official: Vaccines Don't Cause Autism

"Let me make a small concession on behalf of the medical community: The CDC is technically correct when it asserts, as it did this week in a surprise update to its website, that "studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism." But the underlying logic of this change clearly goes beyond the wispy double negative. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already said that he believes in the affirmative: Vaccines do cause autism."

"If this pretzel logic is confusing, that's the point. Bewilderment and doubt are among the anti-vaccine movement's most powerful weapons. It's true that doctors cannot say with absolute certainty that some ingredient in some vaccine, or combination of vaccines, does not contribute in some way, however small or large, to the rise in autism diagnoses. We also can't rule out the possibility that infant vaccines cause tornadoes or bad movies. Uncertainty is inseparable from science."

"Kennedy has firsthand knowledge of how difficult it is to prove a medical assertion. He began his crusade against immunizations 20 years ago, with the argument that the vaccine preservative thimerosal was causing a spike in autism rates. In his discredited 2005 article on the topic, he said he was "convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real." In fact, the evidence was very weak, and additional real-world observations have further undermined his claim."

The CDC updated website language to state that studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism, creating room for uncertainty. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now secretary of Health and Human Services, publicly maintains that vaccines cause autism and can direct agencies toward that view. Anti-vaccine advocates use confusion and doubt as persuasive tactics. Medical evidence linking thimerosal to autism was weak; thimerosal was removed from many childhood vaccines yet autism diagnoses continued to rise. Real-world observations have further undermined the thimerosal claim, including countries like Denmark where the preservative was removed but diagnoses still climbed.

Read at The Atlantic