Essay Sample on Conspiracy Theories: Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

Introduction

Fake news is challenging the current society's trust. At its toxic point these impurity stances a deep threat to democracy by sabotaging its bedrock: a shared commitment of truth. The community gets it frustrating when the misconceptions spread to due to the wrong perception of people towards a particular ideology; among them is the myth that vaccines cause health risk towards children. It is considered annoying since it causes direct and long-term consequences. In the last 20 years, the Autism rates in developing countries sharply increase. The CDC report (2011) shows that for children born in 1992 1 in 150 was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While those for the children who were born in 2004, about 1 in 68 children would receive an ASD diagnosis. The Autism trend between the 1990s and that from the 1940s through the 1980s are not comparable. In the early years, autism was linked with very severely affected individuals, and its estimation was about 1 in 10,000 people.

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The cause of autism is not clear, but the role of vaccine to the condition has been questioned, together with other possible risk factors for ASD, like the advanced parental age, genetic predisposition, among other environmental factors. Perhaps, vaccines have received ore speculation something that has attracted the attention of many, physicians, scientists and other public health researchers.

The unreliable research paper conducted by Andrew Wakefield and published in The Lancet linked the vaccine to colitis and autism spectrum disorders. The research was retracted in 2010 but still cited by various anti-vaccinationists. Wakefield researched on a possible connection of the vaccine and bowel disease by stating that persistent infection with vaccine virus led to the disruption of the intestinal tissues that later leads to the bowel disease together with neuropsychiatric disorder (specifically, autism). Some section of this hypothesis associating vaccination with autism had previously been researched. For instance, Fudenberg conducted a small pilot study where through a published mainstream journal, theorized the relationship, just as Gupta dod through the review of a possible remedy for autism. It was clear that Wakefield did not examine both hypotheses before he started his speculations. IN 1998, Wakefield, together with 12 co-authors, circulated a case series study in the Lancet asserting that they have established the evidence. They claimed that they had conducted 12 different cases hypothesizing measles virus found in children's digestive systems who have demonstrated symptoms of autism after the MMR vaccination. However, in the research, they asserted that they could not show the causal relationship between MMR vaccination and autism. But through a video, released by Wakefield, he coincide with the paper's publication, that an underlying there is an association between the MMR and autism "...the risk of this particular syndrome (what Wakefield termed autistic enterocolitis) developing is related to the combined vaccine, the MMR, rather than the single vaccines."

The allegation of the research spread all over the developed countries and led to a sharp decline in vaccination rates in Ireland and the UK. Despite the rejection of the report, the campaign connected to the allegation continued in the anti-vaccination propaganda, prompting an increase in the cases of mumps and measles leading to the deaths as well as permanent severe injuries.

After the earlier claims in 1998, several critical epidemiological types of research were sparked. However, in the review of the evidence given by, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the Cochrane Library and the UK National Health Service found no connection between MMR vaccine and autism.