Urban Legend

I've always been a big fan of urban myths. Having grown up in an environment that fosters creative play and making fun out of nothing (aka growing up in the sticks), I've become a big fan of magical creatures lurking around in the woods, mountains, and valleys. Big Foot is probably one of my all time favorite urban myths, along with the existence of UFOs.

Urban myths also describe phenomena that seem real and exciting, but no one really knows why they exist or where they came from. Like the urban myth that Coke invented Santa, or the Bermuda Triangle... haha, they always make me laugh.

However ridiculous the urban myth is, they never seem to do much harm. But now, in our frantic age of existence, there is one urban myth that runs the possibility of doing detrimental harm: the myth that vaccinations cause autism.

Wakefield et al (1998) suggest that vaccines may cause autism as a bi product of gastro-intestinal complications. This caused quite a stir, and 8 studies were conducted to test Wakefield's hypothesis. Notice I said "Wakefield's hypothesis", because he never actually ran a study. He was simply extrapolating on little/no data from his armchair.

All of the studies concluded the same thing: there is no increase chance of autism from vaccination. Also, they found that there is no increase chance of regressive subtype of autism.

It was later found that Wakefield was receiving money from families who were suing vaccination companies. Ethics breach? Conflict of interest? Possibly. But since then, all of the co-authors of Wakefield's paper have publicly retracted their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.

You're probably reading this thinking, "Well, shit! Why in the hell do people still chose to not vaccinate their children? Don't they know that this is all a crock?"

Unfortunately, most people don't know about this, and if they do, they don't want to take any chances. I understand completely. However, people need to have a little bit of faith in science, and they also need to take a look at the big picture.

If we chose not to vaccinate our children, we run the risk of an MMR outbreak, etc. I'm not an epidemiologist, but from what I understand, we are dangerously close to going below the "safe threshold" for vaccinations.

Before we do anything that could harm us or our children, we need to take a look at the big picture. A lot of parents are very, very scared that their children is going to “come down with the autisms” and because of that, emotions get in the way and they sometimes make poor decisions. It should be the responsibility of medical professionals to disseminate this information when parents are considering whether or not to vaccinate their children. Ultimately, it is the choice of the parent, but it’s the duty of the medical professional to dispel the urban myth that autism is caused by vaccines so parents can make an informed choice for their child’s future.