You Can't Vaccinate Stupid

The anti-vaccination movement grew up out of the idea that medical technology that has saved more lives than we shall ever be able to know might cause autism. That incredibly destructive idea came out of a study published in The Lancet that has been as thoroughly disproven as any academic research we have ever known. Perhaps discrediting the study would've been sufficiently effective, if not for the interference of Playboy model and comedic actress Jenny McCarthy. Ms. McCarthy's pediatrician believed the debunked study and convinced her vaccination was the reason she had autistic children. As a result of her advocacy of this deeply stupid pseudoscience, many people in the United States have begun to refuse to vaccinate their children. Even if this is merely a matter of parents endangering the lives of their own children, it is a moral outrage, but the true consequences are a great deal more lamentable.

Within living memory exists a time before vaccination. I'm talking about the time when diphtheria, polio, meningitis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, mumps, whooping couch, pneumonia, rotavirus, rubella, smallpox, tetanus, chicken pox, and more routinely killed children. There was a time when we had these diseases either virtually eliminated or rendered survivable because we had vaccinations for all of them. That was before the anti-vaccination movement took its toll. Now we see diseases that medical science had pretty much defeated roaring back and people are dying because people who believe Jenny McCarthy won't vaccinate their kids. This is not an argument where there are no consequences for being wrong. If vaccination does cause autism in one in 110 kids, but more kids get to live because of said vaccinations, that's still less dead kids by a large margin. However, if the anti-vaccination people are wrong, people will die for no good reason.

Look, I am autistic and my entire blog is about seeing things from an autistic point of view. Any regular reader will know how much I hate being autistic, how badly I wish there were a cure, and that I would not wish the condition on my worst enemy. So take it from someone who would rather die than inflict autism on a single child, let alone one in 110, that vaccines do not cause autism. The fact is that what does cause autism is still being researched and, like any area where we don't know all the facts, it invites misinformation. Artificial sweeteners cause autism, Agent Orange causes autism, power lines cause autism, forceps birth causes autism, and more are just some of the ways people have told me I ended up autistic. Parents who don't want their child to be autistic are right to fear the condition and I've written many articles on what there is to fear. What they are not right to do is risk their children's lives and the lives of many others guided only by the depths of their ignorance.

-Frank