Vaccinations Don't Cause Autism: Argumentative Essay

Introduction

Vaccinations/immunizations are useful in protecting humans from contracting an infectious disease. It is much cheaper and safer for one to get immunized rather than get a transmissible disease but in recent times, the debate of whether certain vaccines cause autism has drawn a lot of concern from most parents globally. Autism also referred to as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by challenges with communication and social interaction. The main causes of concern are that vaccine combination into one dose (administered through the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine) and the serious health effects associated with vaccine preservatives and adjuvants can be the causes of autism. Thorough and extensive research done has provided evidence that shows that autism cannot be linked to vaccines. Although there is proof to show that vaccines don't cause autism, parents will always have concerns about immunization of their children. This paper will explore the literature about these concerns (MMR vaccine and effects immunizations preservatives) and provide evidence of the research done to show that the concerns don't hold-up.

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Concerns About Vaccine Combinations

Most parents are concerned about the MMR vaccine exposure to children and its relationship to ASD. The main reason being that autism disorder systems begin to exhibit themselves when a child starts receiving MMR immunizations. In the US this vaccine is administered twice (when a baby is 12 to 15 months old and later at an age of 2 to 6 years) (Hviid et al., 2019). The dose combination was believed to be associated with ASD through a report authored by Andrew Wakefield and published by The Lancet in 1998. This report has widely led to a group of people referred to the "anti-vax", who oppose vaccination to be administered to their kids. The anti-vax group poses a great threat to both herd and individual immunity, which has caused massive outbreaks of measles recently. (Taylor, Swerdfeger, and Eslick, 2014)

However, since Wakefield's report, studies have been performed all over the world and debunked it. Quantitative research on young ones who have received the MMR vaccine has shown no proof of a relationship between MMR vaccine and autism. For example in 2000, Centre for Disease Control (CDC) contracted the National Academy of medicine formerly known as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to investigate the causal link between MMR vaccine and ASD (Jain et al., 2015). By 2004, IOM had performed more than 200 biological and epidemiological research on the relationship between autism and the MMR vaccine (Jain et al., 2015). IOM reproduced its final report that demonstrated that there did not exist vaccine-induced autism from a study of a set of vaccinated children. Additionally, Britain's medical council investigated the concern that the MMR vaccine causes autism and substantiated that Dr. Wakefield's report was biased and unethically wrong and stated clearly that autism is not related to the MMR vaccine.

Similarly, another study done in Japan in 2015, in more than 95,000 children showed no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Another statistical analysis is done in Denmark to evaluate whether MMR vaccination increased the risk of ASD for a cohort of over 657,000 children in 2000, who were then followed up through 2013 (Jain et al., 2015). The study also did not find any support that MMR vaccination increased the risk of ASD. Studies on more ASD susceptible children who had been vaccinated also did not show that MMR vaccination triggered autism. For more than two decades now, all studies done by scientists have shown that the MMR vaccine doesn't lead to the development of autism.

Concerns About Vaccine Ingredients

Numerous concerns also exist that developing autism can be attributed to the ingredients found in most vaccines. Immunization preservatives like mercury are feared that they pose health problems that can eventually develop autism. The mercury preservative-thimerosal used as a vaccine preservative has been found to destroy the mitochondria of the brain cells. This finding led to a more speculative perception by the anti-vax group that mercury in vaccines was the cause of the increased cases of autism. A congressman representing New Jersey introduced the funding bill that required the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to measure the amount of mercury in all vaccines. FDA found out that with the introduced new vaccines in the immunization schedule, exposed a kid to 187.5 mg of ethylmercury by the time they were aged 6 months. By 2001 CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics had stopped using thimerosal in vaccines. (Hviid et al., 2019)

AAP also assured the public that the levels of thimerosal in the vaccines could not hurt children but it made the vaccines even safer. Today all vaccines don't contain thimerosal apart from hepatitis B and influenza vaccines. This reduces the risk of damaging brain cells using thimerosal. Additionally, numerous studies have been done and ruled out the causal relationship between thimerosal and autism development. An example being a study done for CDC by IOM in 2003, that covered more than 140,000 vaccinated children (Taylor, Swerdfeger, and Eslick, 2014). The report found no biological causal link between autism and thimerosal levels found in vaccines.

Other concerns raised about vaccines and autism is that which stipulates that autism is caused by changes in the environmental factors. The believers of this notion are driven by increased autism cases in modern days. The major environmental factors being the increased number of immunizations that a child has to receive. Nowadays, kids have to receive a total of 26 vaccine shots by the time they are 2 years old. Some people believe that increased immunizations have increased the development of autism at a rate of 50%. This has prompted more parents to defer vaccinating their children despite research showing that vaccines are totally safe. (Uno et al., 2015)

Conclusion

All studies performed globally have concluded that vaccines don't cause autism. The false information being aired in the mass media should be curbed and legislation put forth to eliminate the possibility of a catastrophic disaster erupting due to vaccine hesitancy. AAP should strive to eliminate vaccine exemptions in the USA and perform studies to stop the use of mercury as preservatives in influenza and hepatitis-B vaccines in a view to foster more confidence with the vaccines from the public.

References

Hviid, A., Hansen, J., Frisch, M. and Melbye, M. (2019). Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism. Annals of Internal Medicine, 170(8), p.513.

Jain, A., Marshall, J., Buikema, A., Bancroft, T., Kelly, J. and Newschaffer, C. (2015). Autism Occurrence by MMR Vaccine Status among US Children with Older Siblings with and Without Autism. JAMA, 313(15), p.1534.

Taylor, L., Swerdfeger, A. and Eslick, G. (2014). Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies. Vaccine, 32(29), pp.3623-3629.

Uno, Y., Uchiyama, T., Kurosawa, M., Aleksic, B. and Ozaki, N. (2015). Early exposure to the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Vaccine, 33(21), pp.2511-2516.