Super fact 61 : An overwhelming body of scientific evidence has proven that vaccines do not cause autism. In addition, research shows that Tylenol (acetaminophen) is not a likely cause of autism.
Autism is a complex disorder caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. It is estimated that approximately 80-90% of the risk for autism is genetic. There are other factors that also increase the risk for autism such as advanced parental age, birth complications, and prenatal exposure to certain chemicals or infections. However, despite what many people believe, or have heard, vaccines (and Tylenol) is not one of them.
The belief that vaccines cause autism originated primarily from a single, fraudulent 1998 study published by Andrew Wakefield. The study falsely claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism in 12 children. Since then, dozens of high-quality scientific studies, involving millions of children across multiple countries, have found no link between vaccines and autism. One Danish study involved 657,000 children. Leading global health organizations such as CDC, WHO, the American Academy of Pediatrics AAP, have affirmed this conclusion. You can read more about it here, and here, and here. In general, routine vaccines has been shown to be safe.
Some studies have shown minor associations between acetaminophen and autism, but association, or correlation, is not causality. Tylenol is often used more often in challenging pregnancies. Research shows no causal link between Tylenol and autism. This is what Nature, a prestigious, leading weekly scientific journal that publishes peer-reviewed research papers, says. You can read more here, here, and here.
If you focus on the medical research and what reputable medical associations say as opposed to social media memes, talk show hosts, and politicians say, it is obvious that this super fact is true. It is obviously important and yet a lot of people refuse to accept it, including a lot of people I personally know. That makes it a super fact. It is a true and important fact that is surprising or hard to accept for many people.
I try to avoid politics as much as possible in this blog but perhaps this post may seem political to some, but it really isn’t. It’s the government agencies, politicians, political think tanks and individuals who reject scientific evidence that does not support their agendas who are being overly political. Just presenting the facts does not make you political. Just like thermometers don’t have political parties (global warming) neither do statistical tools, DNA or viruses.
What about the Autism Epidemic?
It is true that autism diagnoses have increased by about 300% over the last 20 years. There are two main reasons for this increase. First, the definition of autism spectrum disorder has been broadened. Second, public health programs have increased screening that look for signs of autism at wellness visits for children ages 18–24 months. There is also an increased awareness about autism among parents and in society. The subgroup consisting of severe cases of autism has increased very little if at all. You can read more about that here.
However, it should also be noted that in addition to genetics, which is the major cause, certain factors such as higher parental age, air pollution, infections during pregnancy, obesity, diabetes, immune system disorders, low birthrate, extreme prematurity, are associated with an increased risk. Some of these factors have gotten worse. What is not the cause is vaccines. You can read more about that here, here, here, and here.
Related Super Facts
One of my super facts posts that is related to this post is:
Smallpox Killed 300 million People in the Last Century Before Eradication
There are also super facts that may not be directly related to this post but that share one particular feature with this super fact, and that is that they are frequent targets of denial, derision, mockery, and misrepresentation by some (or many) of our political leaders.
- Global Warming is Happening and is Caused by us
- EV Cars Indeed Emit Less Carbon Pollution
- Emissions of ozone-depleting gases have fallen by 99 Percent
- Sulfur dioxide pollution has fallen by 95 percent in the US
To see the other Super Facts click here
Super Facts 
Thank you, Thomas! It’s important information to get out there. Bennett Voylesbennettvoyles.de Tel. +49 151 62967276 Winterfeldtstr. 39 10781 Berlin, Germany
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Thank you so much for your kind comment Ben, and I agree with you.
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This is extremely important information but the people who should read about this topic have already decided that it’s fake, along with wind turbines causing cancer and climate change being imaginary. It’s not about facts; it’s about saying anything to accelerate an agenda.
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Thank you Lynette. Unfortunataly, I believe that you are right. People often believe what they want to believe and dismiss information based on their biases instead of evidence.
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Somente os idiotizados de tanto serem manipulados podem achar que as vacinas seriam prejudiciais.
Abraço grande e fraterno
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Thank you Gustavo
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It’s a wild claim they make! Also, there’s nothing inherently bad about being autistic as there’s many high functioning autistic people, although if does come with challenges.
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Thank you Sara. You bring up a very good point. Like you say, there’s nothing inherently bad about being autistic as there’s many high functioning autistic people.
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True and some carry some unique gifts that make them stronger in certain areas than many neutrotypical people.
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Yes you are right. I read about this. Also, our son could do some amazing things when he was little. When he was three years old I read him a story “Momotaro”, the Peach Boy, a Japanese folk story. I read it a few times and he loved it. It was about a thousand words. One day when I was going to read the story again he told me the entire story exactly word for word. Not one word wrong. He had memorized it all precisely. Unfortunately, he also have ADHD and he struggled in school. He was diagnosed with autism and ADHD in college, which was a little bit late. We should have paid attention to the signs.
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Wow that would have been cool to hear him recite the whole book! At so young an age. A lot of people get diagnosed later, sometimes even after 50.
It’s a struggle in classroom settings for kids who have adhd and/or autism. It’s great he went to college!
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Some kids with high functioning autism do well in school and others do not. I think the autism ADHD combo is not a good one for academics and he got help very late. Despite numerous hints from his teachers in middle school and high school we did not react. They say both Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton had high functioning autism but back then there was no diagnosis.
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I could see that! The main thing is you know now about your son. And true autism with ADHD would be a challenge!
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Yes you are right. I can add that we pretty much knew about the ADHD while he was in high school. Teachers had suggested it. He went to university and they accepted him despite his bad grades because he had very high SAT scores. However, after a 1-2 years fiasco we decided to test him and what came out was ADHD + high functioning autism.
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High SAT scores is great! And what’s good is that he’s high functioning too.
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It could be worse. He is living a pretty normal life. He has a girlfriend he is sharing an apartment with, he is struggling with finishing his degree, but at least he is doing it. Back in high school he had the highest SAT scores in his class and the worst grades, and his teachers brought it up with me several times. I should say it was a competitive private school, St. Marks School of Texas. However, in retrospect it would have been better for him to go to a school for kids that need help.
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I’m glad he’s living a normal life. The simple act of getting a long term relationship is no easy feat either. But that’s true it would have been more helpful to have a school more dedicated to his learning style.
I may have high functioning autism as well. It definitely explains a lot. Being intelligent but struggling with certain types of learning & not accepting certain social rules.
Home schooling helped me a lot. Then in college I seemed to do better with class learning.
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Thank you so much Sara. I am replying to your previous comment because we ran out of levels (funny WP limit). High functioning autism seems to be difficult to detect, but you are good at figuring those things out. It is great that you did well at class learning at that level. Home schooling might have been better for him too. The way we did it he was maybe not prepared for college and the responsibility and self-sufficiency that requires. But he also has severe ADHD.
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Home schooling would have been great for him likely. Sorry to hear he didn’t do so well in college. It’s a challenge to understand it all and it’s mostly been in recent years that more people are understanding it. I love how many high functioning autistic people see things that isn’t easily observable by the average NT person.
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What you say “high functioning autistic people see things that isn’t easily observable by the average NT person.” I recently read about that. That mildly autistic are very good at observing obscure details in someone’s behavior as well as things in nature. I read that narcissists are afraid of high functioning autistic people because they can see through them so easily. Also the fact that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein (thought to be high functioning autistic) could notice and figure things that no one had thought about before. It probably was not just intelligence or education.
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Yes that is very interesting isn’t it? That Einstein and Newton were autistic. That could be scary for some narcissists when someone can unmask them pretty quickly. Or at least call them out when they start doing something bad that other people overlook or accept.
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Yes you are so right
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Thank you for the informative article.
Politics aside, while I have not seen any research that does prove MMR link to autism, in all fairness all these researches cannot rule out convincingly either.
Anyone who has been involved in research knows how to swerve and present what they want to present.
The only real fact for sure is: “We really have no clue on autism,” therefore any claims for or against should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Having said that, politicians are the last people on earth that make sense—vaccines or other matters they should not stick their noses into.
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Just in case someone misunderstands what I wrote as being against vaccines, what I mean is this:
1) What Science Can and Can’t Say
Science can say: “We’ve looked hard, and we don’t see a consistent link between MMR and autism.”
But it can’t say: “Your son’s autism definitely wasn’t related to MMR.”
That’s unknowable. And pretending otherwise is arrogant.
A large part of the research that links DNA and other factors to autism, is also associative—something they used to dismiss the MMR “evidence”.
2) Complexity in Cause and Cure
Autism, like cancer, is a multifactorial condition. Despite decades of research, science has not identified a singular cause for autism. Genetic studies have revealed associations with hundreds of variants, but none are determinative. Environmental factors, including potential exposure to neurotoxins such as heavy metals, are also under investigation, yet no definitive causal pathways have been established.
This complexity mirrors what we see in oncology: while many cancers are treatable and some curable, their origins often remain elusive. Lifestyle, genetics, environmental exposures, and stochastic cellular events all contribute, but rarely in isolation.
The absence of a cure for autism underscores the limitations in our understanding of its etiology. Just as we cannot conclusively attribute cancer to one factor, we cannot definitively rule out or confirm any single cause of autism. Scientific humility demands that we acknowledge these uncertainties and continue to investigate with rigor and openness.
To say “we don’t know” is not a failure—it is a reflection of the current boundaries of knowledge and a call for deeper inquiry.
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Just a note, my first reply to you was to your first comment even though you posted your second comment before my first reply. I had not seen your second comment yet.
I partially agree with what you are saying. The studies did not prove with certainty that there is no link whatsoever between autism and vaccines and like you say that might unknowable. However, what they showed was that even in large scale studies no link showed up, making any link unlikely and if one exists it must be extremely small and not detectable even in large scale studies.
However, when you say “A large part of the research that links DNA and other factors to autism, is also associative—something they used to dismiss the MMR “evidence”. That is not what I find when In read these articles. After you find a correlation / association between two variables (which does not mean much) the next and most important step is to show causality by, for example, being able to exclude other variables that could explain the association / correlation. They’ve done that.
For the genetic factor. We know autism is linked to genetics through twin and family studies, which show high heritability, and through whole genome sequencing that identifies specific genetic mutations and variations associated with increased risk. These studies reveal that both rare, de novo mutations and complex combinations of common genetic variants contribute to autism, influencing factors like prenatal brain development and synaptic protein function. This is all in the articles I linked to.
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I agree. My son got it after MMR and I do not say it is because of it. I have no evidence that it caused it and never settled on that. But I am also not ruling it out either. I simply do not know. What I’ve read does not sit right with me hence what I said. I do not distrust science at all (I am doing a double master myself) but all I am saying is that at times there more than the eye meets even in our own research. I’m sure you’ve seen it and what goes on with names that have no clue but sign anyway to later retract and so on. (Another can of worms). Your take is appreciated. Thank you my friend.
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Thank you TMC. I have been involved with the peer review process myself but in a different field. However, I cannot entirely agree with your comment. To express it simplistically: science does not know everything, but it knows a lot. You can never know anything with 100% certainty, but you can know some things with very high certainty, and those are the type of facts this blog is focused on. There are some studies that are less than perfect and even fraudulent ones, like Wakefield’s, but that’s where repeatability comes in. When you have high quality studies using large sets (or experiments) that have been repeated over and over by independent researchers and they have reached the same conclusions, then you have very high certainty.
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Not when the specimen is selective. I am not saying the research is wrong but all it can show is association at best. I do not have a PHD like yourself but my background is also in physics and maths amongst other things. Yes I am with you on the declaration that there is no evidence that the MMR causes autism, but also the research does not convincingly disprove it either. In general, sure it might be true as there is a lot behind autism, but to use this evidence specifically for a parent telling him/her I can tell you 100% your child did not get autism from the MMR is not right also.
By the way, I am one such parent whose son got autism after the MMR and the tests showed no genetics linked to it. I am one of those affected by it and I am being as balanced as possible on this and honest in my opinion. It is of no benefit to me to argue for or against otherwise we could go over each study and I would pick apart all discrepancies (not disprove the findings don’t misunderstand please, but I can show bias and prejudice in each one).
Thank you for your input as always.
Feel free to disagree my friend.
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As I mentioned in my previous comment. For other more likely causes of autism they demonstrated much better than association. (see my comment and the articles I linked to).
I am very sorry to hear that your son got autism. My younger son also has autism but he is high functioning.
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I am happy for you. Mine is severe. Still I am not complaining as there are far worse than he is.
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I am so sorry
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Great post Thomas. It is shocking that this information still needs to be heard and read by some. Why are people prone to believe social media over scientists? And this recent acetaminophen claim is ridiculous. I wondered if Trump has a beef with the makers of Tylanol. Maggie
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Thank you Maggie. I agree, social media and rumors, and biased news have an enromous influence of people’s opinions and impressions and scientists are not able to, or have failed to, communicate what is known to the general public on so many topics. Then so many people just want to believe what they want to believe.
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Hi Thomas, I have read much of what you’ve shared and I agree that there is no proven link between the MMR or any other vaccine and autism. However, there is early evidence suggesting a link between the Covid vaccine and/ or Covid and blood clots. My own husband was told his blood clot was most likely caused by one or the other.
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Thank you Robbie. I have to admit I don’t know anything about a link between the Covid vaccine and/ or Covid and blood clots. Hopefully, they will find out more about that. I am sorry about your husband’s blood clot.
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Heart touching
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Thank you
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This is such an interesting post. Thank you for explaining it so clearly, Thomas.
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Thank you so much Esther
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Java Bean: “Ayyy, okay, but it is a demonstrated fact that ice cream causes shark attacks, sí?”
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Ha ha Java Bean. That is the problem with only looking at correlation/association. You can find the strangest correlations if you look hard enough. That is why that after you find a correlation you need to look for causality by excluding other correlations or finding a mechanism causing the correlation. That’s the part called analysis.
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Thank you for this important post, Thomas. I can’t say it enough.
Sometimes I think that people have latched onto the idea of “vaccines cause autism” because it’s so easy to fix – just don’t get vaccinated. Same thing with acetaminophen – just take ibuprofen instead. That’s way easier than having to reduce air, water, and soil pollution, eat healthier, use fewer chemicals when cleaning or doing laundry, or cut down on plastics. Those would all take EFFORT.
I’m not a scientist or doctor, and I don’t want to spread a new conspiracy theory, but I do think that people need to be more aware of our increased exposure to chemicals and the impact they have on our health, especially the health of our children. 😀
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I believe you are right. “vaccines cause autism” is an easy thing to blame, all while we have a very large amount other correlations that through statistical analysis and looking for mechanisms have been shown to be true causes. That does not mean there aren’t causes we haven’t discovered yet, but we have successfully excluded some, like vaccines. One likely cause is air pollution, Who knows what other causes there are but focusing all other energy on causes shown to be false is a waste.
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In Oregon, timber companies conduct aerial spraying of herbicides before clear-cutting. There’s no way we who live in forested areas can avoid getting dusted. I worry about GMOs and the impact on food quality. You’re right that it doesn’t make sense to blame something that has already been ruled out when there are so many other glaring options.
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Thank you so much Diane. That is a great way of putting it. Vaccines have been ruled out unlike many other things like diabetes and air pollution, which have not been ruled out, and of course genetics which is not just very strongly correlated but has been shown to be a cause.
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Thank you for the open comments. I appreciate respect in a debate.
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Thank you Armann and Kaymann
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Oh this one is a controversial one forsure… I have a daughter that almost died from the MMR .. so I’m definitely on the no vaccines side.. I spent many years fighting the systems , schools , dentists (even my grandfather who was a dentist) on flouride and vaccines.. there is a family split forsure… I listen to it all and have done my research as well but what I have even more of is experience… a daughter that almost died in the hospital for 7 days after the MMR and grandchildren with fevers ravaging their bodies after the vaccines they load them with..I appreciate your science research and view as I’m not one to turn away from other opinions , rather share my experience . That’s my respectful stance 😂.
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Thank you so much Kerri for explaining your side of the issue and for sharing your experiences. I am very sorry for what happened to your daughter. That is horrible. I’ve read that there can be severe allergic reactions to the MMR vaccine even though it is extremely rare. My kids got all the recommended vaccines. My daughter in law, who is a neuroscientist and knows a lot about medicine, is doing the same for our grandchild (her son) who was born two days ago. I did not get the MMR vaccine but that was because it was not available in northern Sweden at the time (that’s where I grew up). I got the diseases instead, and a serious complication from measles (pneumonia, joint pain, extremely high fever, etc.). Measles was horrible. I will never forget the horrible itching. Rubella was less bad. It was just a good opportunity to skip school.
As for vaccines and autism, which is the focus of this post. I naturally must focus on the conclusions of the scientific community, consensus grown from multiple studies, other evidence, etc. Personal anecdotes don’t count as evidence. One of the studies, a Danish study from 2019, examined data from over 657,000 Danish children born between 1999 and 2010, and found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, even in children already considered at higher risk. If there is a risk at all, it is so small that not even a study this big can find it. There is probably not even the tiniest link, but if there is, it is safe to ignore. In my case, I wish there had been an MMR vaccine when I was a kid.
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I’m so sorry you had to go through that, this all shows me again how grace with opinions and differences are so important to hear, there is always more than the eye can see . I appreciate your perspective and your insight and personal experience as you did mine and that is really where all things are understood because we are all different in so many unique ways and experiences and listening is always the best antidote. I appreciate your time and respect your views.
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Yes I agree with you Kerri “grace with opinions and differences are so important to hear” is certainly true. I can add that my entire class except three kids got the measles about the same time. It was third grade.
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Ouch , that was a rough year for your entire class. I wonder what was different for those three kids that kept them from being sick?
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Good question. I suspect that it was one kid who got it and spread it to everyone else but that he/she may not have interacted with those three kids. Measles is very contagious.
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A vital and factual post. Presenting the overwhelming scientific consensus is crucial. Thank you for championing public health by dismantling misinformation with irrefutable evidence. (CDC, WHO, Johns Hopkins)
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Thank you so much for your very kind words Livora
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You’re most welcome, Thomas 🌿 I truly appreciate your thoughtful article. Grateful for voices like yours that bring clarity and encouragement. Keep shining your light!
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Thank you so much Livora. I really appreciate your support.
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Thank you for this important post. Ideally one should always speak to their doctor about issues like this rather than blindly follow the uninformed opinions of non-experts.
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Yes I certianly agree with you. We always listen to our doctor when it is about vaccines. (and other things) We have a great family doctor.
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If there were any justice, the quacks and crackpots and whackadoos running the current regime would be held responsible for all the bad effects of all the unchecked fevers that are going to occur because of pregnant women being afraid to take Tylenol now. They won’t, but they should be.
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Yes, unfortunately it is going to confuse and scare a lot of people. We just became grandparents and our daughter in law was pregnant before the current hallaballoo began so she didn’t need to hear it. However, she is a neuroscientist (PhD) so the risk of her becoming afraid of Tylenol would have been very low anyway. Like I remember you saying, listen to your doctors.
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Since autism is more common in boys than in girls, is it possible that autism is caused by one or more recessive X-linked genes? Use color-blindness and hemophilia for comparative reference.
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That is possible. They know genetics is a major cause. However, I have not read much about that. That’s something to study.
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When vaccines were found to not cause autism, that made me very disappointed. We still didn’t find the explanation for autism. We thought we had a lead.
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We have found other real causes of autism, genetic being the most obvious one. However, there are other likely causes that makes autism more likely, air pollution, diabetes, infections during pregnancy. I listed a few in my post. However, the increase in diagnosis is mostly due an expansion of the diagnosis and we are better at diagnosing it. Vaccines, and most likely Tylenol are not causes of autism. They’ve been ruled out.
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Vaccines? You must be talking about mercury compounds like thiosalicyclic acid.
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No not really. Thimerosal was also ruled out as a cause of autism but despite that fact it has not been used in American vaccines since 2001 for precautionary reasons. However, the vaccines cause autism myth has still been going strong to this day.
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I can add one more thing to that, and that is that it was the faulty study on the MMR vaccine that started the vaccine causes autism hysteria and the MMR vaccine did not have Thimerosal in it (but it became an issue later).
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Thank you so much for sharing your fact based post. I’ve been seeing more and more people believing in the link between vaccines and autism as well as other health issues and it’s genuinely concerning. Not only is most of the fear of vaccines completely unnecessary, most of the “evidence” is also not based on any actual scientific research. Yes, like all medications vaccines can occasionally cause side effects or adverse reactions. But having certain diseases and spreading them to others is way more dangerous than taking vaccines. Also, the biggest reason that more people are diagnosed with autism not is simply because we know more about it. There hasn’t been a sudden rise in autism, simply a rise in diagnoses of it as more symptoms are being included and better understood.
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Thank you so much Pooja. You are right. There are many links to autism, primarily genetics but also other more minor links like diabetes, air pollution, etc., but vaccines is one that has been very well studied and ruled out, and yet it seems like this myth will never die. Quite a few of the people close to me believe vaccines causes autism. Like you say the rise in autism diagnosis is mostly because we are much better at diagnosing it and have expanded what is considered autism.
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Yes, that’s true I was just reading about how there could be a link between pollution and autism.
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Yes we shouldn’t focus on things that’s been well researched and ruled out, but on things that are more likely like airpollution.
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Exactly, I think that would really help much more than fixating on things that have been disproved.
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Yes you are absolutely right Pooja.
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Hello from the UK
Autism is very broadly defined and could be applied to the majority of people in some form so it is not a useful label.
As to vaccines, these contain the alleged disease causing agent plus toxic adjuvants so must provoke disease. Inject these into an adult is one thing but into a child or baby is quite another as they are at developmental stage.
Babies/children’s heads are proportionally smaller than adults so the likely hood of toxic substances affecting the brain would be greater.
There are plenty of other toxic substances in air, water, food etc. but these don’t get injected into the body, by-passing the skin defences.
The question should not be whether vaccines cause autism but do vaccines cause harm, including brain injury/chemical interference. Clearly they do.
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Thank you alphaandomega21 for your comment. This post is about the link between vaccines and autism (and acetaminophen). I know that some people are allergic to some vaccines and that they are not 100% safe. That is an issue for another post (maybe). However, if you wish to broaden the scope by discussing the disadvantages of vaccines in general then you might as well compare them to the benefits of vaccines as well.
There was an outbreak of measles in northern Sweden (where I grew up) when I was a kid (in third grade). It was before the measles or MMR vaccine was available. All but three kids in the class got the measles including me. I had complications including pneumonia and a very high fever and I remember that the itching was horrible. Rubella was not so bad. You can also read about the fact that smallpox (I am glad I did not have that) killed around 300 million people in the 20th century but no one since it was eradicated. I have not studied this topic (yet) but like I said that it is for a different post.
As for the autism not being a useful label. I have a number of relatives who have been diagnosed with autism, some are severe, some are high functioning. There are diagnostic criteria. Why I chose to make a post about the link between autism and vaccines is because it is a hot topic that has been extensively studied. The “Danish study” link in the second paragraph describes one study in Denmark. As the article states, among the 657,461 children included in the analysis, 6,517 were diagnosed with autism over the next decade. But there was no overall increased risk for the developmental disorder among those who received the MMR vaccine when compared with those who had not gotten the vaccine, the researchers found. Regardless of whether autism is a useful label or not (according to you), the various diagnosis of the cases of autism were done independently from of the collection of the statistics, which makes the conclusion meaningful in either case. Vaccines as a cause for autism (as it was/is diagnosed) has been ruled out. However, as you can see in my last paragraph a number of other causes have been found or are being investigated.
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Dear Thomas
Thank you for your reply. One cannot discuss autism without broadening the discussion. You did not address my point that the very nature of vaccines is to provoke disease. This will cause harm by definition even if only mild.
The medical profession likes to take symptoms of various kinds and re-label them. Calling the broad range that is attributed to what is called autism is part of that.
The world is full of pharmaceuticals poisoning air, food and water. Injecting them into people, especially small children will be harmful.
The alleged benefits are based on persistent advertising, rebranding of disease and manipulation of statistics. In reality poisoning via vaccines causes harm to some (nobody knows what is in each vial before injection, it is taken on trust) but the appearance of benefits is a statistical illusion.
It should be born in mind that statistical correlation is used to justify vaccines as of some use, yet this is not causation as one event in someone’s past (a vaccine) is not proof of lack of a named disease years later. There are far too many variables to be considered and we are all individuals with differing circumstances.
It is not that I always thought this but that I used to think that vaccines were of some use but not for the ‘flu. In 2020 when the world went mad over COVID 19 when the ‘flu was rebranded I had to re-examine my position.
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Thank you for your comment alphaandomega21
“One cannot discuss autism without broadening the discussion.” – I am sorry, but this is not a site for discussing autism. This is a post specifically about whether vaccines cause autism or not and based on extensive and repeated high quality research the conclusion is that vaccines have been ruled out as a cause for autism. I am very aware of the basics of how vaccines work. Weakened or inactive forms of a virus (or bacterium) are introduced into the body, triggering the immune system to produce antibodies, so that if the body is later exposed to the live virus or bacterium, the antibodies will be ready to fight it off, preventing infection or reducing its severity, which is exactly the point. In other words, minor harm prevents major harm. We accept those minor risks all the time in medicine as well as in our own lives. I certainly would have preferred an MMR vaccine over what I suffered from having the measles.
As for all the rest that you are saying. If I understand you correctly you are dismissing all the research and data that we have as “manipulation of statistics”. I have to admit that makes no sense to me. Are you claiming that the Danish study of the Danish study of 657,461 children was “manipulation of statistics”, and if so, what evidence do you have for that accusation? When I was a kid pretty much every kid got measles, including me. It was very common. Since the MMR vaccine came into existence measles have become extremely rare. My kids did not have it. Do you claim that this is just “manipulation of statistics”? Smallpox Killed 300 million People in the Last Century Before Eradication in 1977. Is that “manipulation of statistics”? Are all the many thousands of medical professionals, virologists and data scientists, and other researchers in a conspiracy to manipulate statistics. What you say sounds quite astonishing to me. Could you be more specific about what statistics have been manipulated and by whom?
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Dear Thomas
As regards your first paragraph you claim minor harm from the vaccine prevents major harm. To start with this ignores the fact that vaccines do cause serious harm sometimes, occasionally death. The claim we hear is then ‘well, this is for the greater good of the population’.
The proof of this is based on what? Statistical data related to vaccines which I addressed but which I will expand on.
The manipulation of statistics is that as you no doubt well know there are “lies, damn lies and statistics”. It is the nature of statistics to be manipulated to try and make a case and statisticians would be out of a job if they didn’t.
So it is one thing to have a statistic, say, there are so many people in a country at a given date, but another to compare two sets of data and say ‘Ah ha, the correlation proves causation.’
But correlation doesn’t prove causation, this is well understood. As regards vaccines, one factor, the administering of a vaccine from a certain date is compared to absence or reduction of disease over the course of many years.
This omits to consider the myriad of factors applying to the population covered, diet, air pollution, water supply, sanitation, etc. These are the public health measures that reduced disease.
So the huge volumes of statistical data cannot be justified as the reason for lack of disease, at very best vaccine administration is one among a great many. Any competent statistician should understand this.
And really for you to say “This is a post specifically about whether vaccines cause autism or not…” is a ridiculous statement as you have also referred to Tylenol. Also you have said “In general, routine vaccines has been shown to be safe.”
The link does not show vaccines to be safe, but in its own words “we found no new evidence of increased risk for key adverse events”.
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Hello AlphaOmega21, first you don’t need to lecture me on that “correlation doesn’t prove causation”. In my third paragraph of my post, I stated “correlation, is not causality”. Correlation is just the first step. To establish causation, you can use various statistical methods to exclude other variables as well as experiments (regression analysis, regression discontinuity design, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and many more…). Why we know that the sharp decline in measles and eradication of smallpox is due to vaccination is a lot more than just correlation, even though the correlation in the second case is extremely impressive. Without considering any statistical tools, do you think that it is likely that diet, air pollution, water supply, sanitation, could take us from hundreds of millions of deaths from smallpox to no naturally occurring cases of smallpox since 1977, in all countries and all regions in the world, including extremely poor ones.
Regarding your first paragraph “….To start with this ignores the fact that vaccines do cause serious harm sometimes, occasionally death….” It doesn’t ignore this fact; I am making a comparison.
Regarding your claim that “This is a post specifically about whether vaccines cause autism or not” being a ridiculous statement because I also considered Tylenol. I don’t think that was a ridiculous statement. It was in response to you making the claim that we must widely expand the scope “One cannot discuss autism without broadening the discussion” even though I clearly stated the scope (the alleged autism-vaccine link plus Tylenol) at the top of the post in bold, so you knew what I meant.
As for manipulation of statistics, it does happen. Andrew Wakefield deliberately manipulated and falsified data in his 1998 study linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. I have recently seen anti-vaxxer organizations manipulate statistics twice. However, I know of no manipulation of statistics from the sources I cited or from any respected sources in general. Quoting Mark Twain / Benjamin Disraeli and making vague accusations of manipulation of statistics by anonymous scientists is not something I can take seriously. You need to be specific. For example, are you accusing the researchers for the Danish study from 2019 of manipulating statistics?
As for the link you mentioned, I assume it is the sixth link in my post (National Library of Medicine). It was a comparison (nothing new claim) with research reported in the same journal in 2014 in this link. It concluded “There is evidence that some vaccines are associated with serious adverse events; however, these events are extremely rare and must be weighed against the protective benefits that vaccines provide.”.
According to your own National Health Service (you said you are from the UK)
Vaccination is the most important thing we can do to protect ourselves and our children against ill health. They prevent millions of deaths worldwide every year. Since vaccines were introduced in the UK, diseases like smallpox, polio and tetanus that used to kill or disable millions of people are either gone or are now very rarely seen.
I tried to address all your issues
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alphaandomega21 I had to remove your last comment as your last line featured a quite bizarre and rude insult. I welcome discussion and disagrements but not that.
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What is bizarre Thomas is your refusal to see the deceit of correlation of statistics for vaccines, a poisonous scam if ever there was. I ended my comment with the anagram of your name, which you can’t deny is an anagram, to contrast with your so-called super fact which is merely based on a claim from manipulated statistics.
Whether anagrams are significant is another matter but you chose to take insult as an excuse to delete my post and not to answer the rest of my points. But I did not expect anything from you but more of your appeals to experts who have a vested interest in maintaining the fraud.
As I repeat from my deleted comment, you are wedded to the idea that short term vaccine harm is good for long term health so it is clear you are not interested in the truth. Perhaps it would be too painful for you to admit it.
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The evidence that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh their minimal risks is drawn from extensive clinical trials, large-scale observational studies, continuous safety monitoring, and significant historical public health outcomes. Major health organizations worldwide, including the CDC and WHO, support this conclusion based on a vast body of scientific data. A 2024 study in The Lancet estimated that vaccines saved 154 million lives globally over 50 years, 95% of which were children under 5.
Who do you expect me to believe?
Should I believe someone who dismiss all statistical analysis and peer reviewed studies done by scientists as “manipulation of statistics” without presenting a shred of evidence, or should I believe the scientific consensus based on studies, peer reviewed articles, scientists around the world verifying each other’s use of statistics, and health organizations around the world? There is no national or international health organization in the world that claims vaccines do more harm than good. That is not appeal to authority, by the way, It is a matter of what is probable. It is also basic common sense. Why don’t we see smallpox anymore, a deadly disease that used to be very common?
It is no point in discussing something I deleted, but what I saw was not even an anagram, just a bizarre insult.
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Thomas, I told you in the comment you conveniently deleted (I keep a record of comments I post including screen shots) that I used to think vaccines were of some use, just not for the ‘flu as people fell ill anyway. In 2020 I woke up to the scam of it all.
You are an intelligent man so I expect you to see through the deceit as I did of claims by the so-called authorities who have a vested interest in maintaining the fraud. Their positions and salaries depend on it.
So you are naïve if you think that just because there is no national or international health organization in the world that claims vaccines do more harm than good this means it is true.
And yes, you are appealing to authority. Wikipedia for example says “An argument from authority is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority figure (or figures) is used as evidence to support an argument.”
As to smallpox this was dealt with by public health measures such as clean air, clean water, effective sanitation etc. See the example of Leicester in the UK where smallpox vaccines mandates were put in place. Riots took place when the populace found they were being made ill and many died as a result of the toxic jabs. Effective public health measures were put in place as I describe and health was vastly improved as a consequence.
As to your final comment “what I saw was not even an anagram” do you need me to spell it out for you? ‘Thomasstigwikman’ anagrams to the phrase I extracted from the anagram machine. It is a fact that anyone should be able to confirm. Why not try it yourself, you might find it amusing at any rate.
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Regarding: conveniently deleted + anagram : I want to keep my blog clean of spam, insults, and rude language. However, since you saved it, go ahead and post the anagram of thomasstigwikman, and I will let it stay for a while.
Regarding : see through the deceit as I did: I compare evidence on this topic and every topic I come across to the best of my ability. You need to give me something substantial.
Certainly, public health measures such as clean air, clean water, effective sanitation etc., helped reduce the number of cases and deaths from smallpox. However, after 300 million people died from smallpox between 1900 and 1977 there has not been a single case of smallpox in the world in almost 50 years, anywhere. Considering that clean air, water, sanitation, wars, poverty are still significant problems around the world, is it realistic to believe that this could have been achieved without vaccines? I’ve read about the anti-vaccination riots in Victorian England, but I am not sure if that is a very relevant argument.
Finally (a bit long) The fact that “….there is no national or international health organization in the world that claims vaccines do more harm than good.” Is far from the only “evidence” I’ve considered or brought up here. But regarding it being “appeal to authority”. Your Wikipedia quote regarding “appeal to authority” is correct but trusting consensus among experts is not automatically an appeal to authority, but a rational argument. You see it is not that simple.
You should not trust one authority figure, or even one expert, especially if it is not their field of expertise. Trusting expert consensus in the relevant field is a quite different matter. This is something that is commonly misunderstood about the appeal to authority fallacy. It is also not just about health organizations, but all the studies, all the researchers, who BTW vaccinate themselves and their children, the doctors including mine who vaccinate themselves and their children, my daughter in law, a neuroscientist, with some expertise in this field vaccinates herself and her child. Believing that everyone in this topic is lying to you and intentionally harming their own children for a pro-vaccination cause is an extremely paranoid and unrealistic world view that I don’t want any part of.
You can also get a hint from Google AI and ChatGPT by asking the question below. I should add, this isn’t strong evidence for anything but a good overview of the “appeal to authority fallacy”
Is trusting consensus among experts an appeal to authority
Google AI:
No, trusting a consensus among experts is not automatically an appeal to authority fallacy; it is a valid and rational shortcut for individuals who lack the time or expertise to evaluate all the evidence themselves. It becomes a fallacy when the expert consensus is used as the only justification for a claim, or when the “experts” are not relevant to the topic or have clear biases.
When it is a rational argument
It’s a proxy for evidence, It accounts for expertise, It reduces bias
ChatGPT:Trusting the consensus among experts is not automatically an appeal to authority fallacy, though it can be misused as one. The distinction lies in how and why the authority is being cited.
When it’s not a fallacy:
Trusting expert consensus is rational when:
The topic is within the domain of the experts’ actual expertise.
The consensus is strong, based on evidence, and well-supported by peer review or scientific method.
You’re using it as a provisional guide in the absence of personally verifiable knowledge.
Example (not a fallacy):
“Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change is largely caused by human activity, so it’s reasonable to accept that as the best current understanding.”
This is appealing to a credible authority based on evidence, not blind trust.
When it is a fallacy:
It becomes a fallacious appeal to authority when:
The “experts” are not actually qualified in the relevant field.
The appeal is used to shut down questioning or ignore contrary evidence.
The consensus is assumed to be infallible or eternal.
Example (fallacy):
“It must be true because Professor Smith said so, and she’s a professor.”
If Professor Smith is speaking outside her field, or there’s no evidence to back her claim, this is a fallacious appeal to authority.
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I reply to your points in reverse order. Your long bit is using consensus among authority figures as a justification to accept what they say uncritically. You have failed to argue why you think short term poisoning/disease is good for long term health.
I repeat yet again that the so-called evidence of benefit used by the vaccine cultists is based on statistical correlation only and that is not proof of efficacy. It matters not how many studies there are, how much one breaks it down, if the fundamental assumption is false, the whole thing is false and producing more studies is pointless except for the analysts who need to justify their jobs.
Your claim that all the researchers and doctors who vaccinate themselves and their children suggests that all researchers and doctors do this. This is patently an absurd claim. As to your daughter-in-law vaccinating herself and her child, this is an appeal to authority yet again; you claim she has some expertise on vaccines (you provide no evidence of this) therefore she is correct in your eyes. The fact that many people do get vaccinated does not prove effectiveness in preventing disease.
The issue with those who get vaccinated is that they believe what they have been told by the pharma marketing which has a vested interest in pushing its products. Its business model will fail if they don’t. One can lie without knowing one is lying when one merely repeats the mantra ‘vaccines save lives’. If harm occurs to a child the parents are invariably told it is not the vaccine and because most trust the doctor they accept it without thinking the matter through. It is not deliberate, just ignorance of the truth.
Re “Considering that clean air, water, sanitation, wars, poverty are still significant problems around the world, is it realistic to believe that this could have been achieved without vaccines?”
Yes, of course. What is wholly unrealistic is to believe that injecting pus, the original basis of smallpox vaccines, or later on allegedly disease causing agents and toxic adjuvants into the body will do any good. It is an insane, vile practice that has gone on for 200 + years and I want no part in it.
Diseases get rebranded to cover the tracks of vaccine damage and smallpox symptoms, which vary in intensity, get labelled as some other pox, a convenient ploy.
As regards something substantial for you, you have not done this yourself as you have relied on your authorities’ claims rather than arguing from the basics as I have done. However, if you wish something to read try this link and its references.
https://romanbystrianyk.substack.com/p/the-greatest-health-revolution
And regarding frontline NHS staff there is link from a pro-vaccine BBC article with a chart which shows how uptake in ‘flu and COVID vaccines (the uptake was only just over 50% to start with for the latter) has plummeted. What do they know, doctors nurses etc., that the public don’t?
Rise of vaccine distrust – why more of us are questioning jabs
16 January 2025
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1jgrlxx37do
As regards the anagram I am really not bothered. What concerns me far more was your denial of your name being an anagram of the phrase I quoted. If you deny the clear fact of an arrangement of letters, whatever you might think about its import or lack of, then people cannot expect you to see the fraud of vaccines as you have denied reality.
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Hello alphaomega21. About the anagram. I don’t remember it being a proper anagram, perhaps I remember incorrectly, but I gave you the opportunity to repost the insulting anagram since you said you had it saved. You can do so. Another thing, your statements tend to be very self-assured, dismissive and sometimes insulting. There are more than 4,000 comments on this blog and I have another blog with more than 12,000 comments. I have had many friendly and constructive disagreements with others, but you are the first blog commentor who has been so focused on me as a person, questioning my integrity, and even being insulting. You are also the first commentor who I feel is ignoring my counter claims without reading them and understanding them. Then you repeat the same claim without addressing my debunking effort. Also: you don’t speak for “people”. You speak for yourself here.
You say – Your long bit is using consensus among authority figures as a justification to accept what they say uncritically : Appealing to scientific consensus that is based on extensive research is not appealing to authority. It is appealing to the low probability of the agreement among thousands of studies, experiments and researchers at organizations of all kinds being incorrect. I and Google AI and ChatGPT explained this pretty well in my previous comment, which you obviously did not read. Likewise, the statement “….there is no national or international health organization in the world that claims vaccines do more harm than good” is not appealing to their authority but to the low likelihood that all those organizations all around the world all would agree on that statement and it still being false, especially considering the extensive and repeated research that has shown that.
You say – I repeat yet again that the so-called evidence of benefit used by the vaccine cultists is based on statistical correlation – In my comments above I explained to you why your statement is false. …Repeating what is false doesn’t make it true. Also, do you expect me to believe that all the scientists at academic institutions, government institutions, etc., are “vaccine cultists”? That’s an emotional outburst not a realistic statement.
You say – Your claim that all the researchers and doctors who vaccinate themselves and their children suggests that all researchers and doctors do this. – No I am not saying this. This is an anecdote from my personal life. I wanted you to think about why people with more or less expertise in this field vaccinate their children. What about your doctors and friends of yours with some expertise? Did you ask them? I’ll bet they vaccinate their kids. If so, do they understand something you don’t.
…they have been told by the pharma marketing which has a vested interest… – maybe but the vaccine business is relatively minor and not profitable business for pharmaceutical companies, more importantly vaccine research is done by many others, academic institutions / universities, government agencies around the world, non-governmental organizations, etc. It is not realistic to think that it is all propaganda. For example, my primary doctor, one of the smartest, best educated and caring doctors I know, promotes and uses vaccines not because he is duped by the pharmaceutical industry but because he understands the topic much better than you or I do. Yes, that is a personal anecdote and not valid scientific evidence, and it might also be an appeal to authority. However, since you are out of hand dismissing all organizations and individuals linked to vaccines as liars this personal anecdote has some value. For example, why would I believe you when you have no evidence for your claims, over my doctor. Just on a personal level.
You say – What is wholly unrealistic is to believe that injecting pus….disease causing agents and toxic adjuvants into the body will do any good. – this is false. Weakened or inactive forms of a virus (or bacterium) are introduced into the body, triggering the immune system to produce antibodies, so that if the body is later exposed to the live virus or bacterium, the antibodies will be ready to fight it off, preventing infection or reducing its severity, which is exactly the point. It is how it is supposed to work. So, on the contrary, it makes perfect sense. You provide no evidence or justification for your claim. Why should I believe it?
Diseases get rebranded to cover the tracks of vaccine damage and smallpox symptoms, which vary in intensity, get labelled as some other pox, a convenient ploy. – why would I believe that conspiratorial and extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence?
Thank you for the “….the-greatest-health-revolution” link. It was interesting reading. However, this article raised a number of red flags with me. He used a lot of mortality rate graphs in an attempt to throw shade on the effectiveness of vaccines. They were not mortality graphs or infection rate graphs. Vaccines do nothing for deaths per infection, they prevent infection. These graphs don’t tell you anything about the effectiveness of vaccines. You state without backing it up, that vaccine researchers manipulate statistics but here you have an example of it. Deaths per infection has indeed a lot to do with the quality of healthcare but very little to do with vaccines, as expected. Other red flags are that the article is polemical, emotionally charged and conspiratorial. The article is not peer reviewed, Roman Bystrianyk does not have a degree or any actual research experience in the relevant field. Yes, those things matter as well. I cannot trust it.
Thank you also for the BBC article. I hope you noticed that your BBC article overall support what I am saying, for example, “In the past he has repeated the false claim that vaccines cause autism, urged parents not to jab their children”. It is exactly why I made that one of my “super facts”. It is important, surprising or disbelieved by many (especially recently), and yet we know it to be true. I also would like to highlight this paragraph in your BBC article.
The reality is every vaccine, like any medical treatment, always carries a small level of risk, some more than others. (I have never denied that).
.
The science and public health perspective is quite clear: not only were Covid vaccines safe and effective, but we would have been in a very different world if they hadn’t been rolled out so quickly,” says Dr Williams at Swansea University.
My concluding remark is that contrary to what you have implied or stated, I am not naïve, I am not being dishonest, I am not wedded to vaccines, and I am open to changing my mind, but I need good evidence to do so, and you haven’t presented any.
I believe I addressed all of your points.
Note we have reached 10 levels of comments. WordPress prevents us from adding comment levels so I had to press reply on one of your previous comments. However, this comment is in response to your comment on October 22, 2025 at 5:48 am CST.
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Re “I don’t remember it being a proper anagram, perhaps I remember incorrectly”
You don’t remember? Yet you make a claim it was insulting? I said in my comment of October 17, 2025 “You are an intelligent man…”, perhaps you find that insulting too??
Re “You are also the first commentor who I feel is ignoring my counter claims without reading them and understanding them.”
Why are you now raising your feelings? We are trying to analysis evidence and logic, not feelings.
You refer to “low likelihood” as regards the organisations you rely on being incorrect. This is probability, not fact. Whilst you may wish to rely on probability, I rely on my observations and the logic that vaccines cause harm to varying degrees to many and harming oneself does not lead to future benefit.
As regard medical professionals who vaccinate themselves and their children you now say this is an anecdote. We can trade anecdotes all day but that will not answer the fundamental fraud of vaccines.
Re “For example, why would I believe you when you have no evidence for your claims, over my doctor. Just on a personal level.”
In the paragraph in which that sentence lies, you acknowledge your reliance on your doctor is an anecdote, not evidence. Yet you ask me for evidence?? I am not asking you to believe me, but the logic of what I have stated repeatedly.
Re your statement on antibodies. The body reacts to injection of pus/toxic material/foreign bodies and antibodies are produced to deal with it. This is what they are meant to do but this is not proof of long term benefit of vaccines, merely the body’s typical defence mechanism in action.
Re “I hope you noticed that your BBC article overall support what I am saying”
I explicitly said “a pro-vaccine BBC article” in my comment to you Thomas; honestly, do you not read what I write? But you have ignored answering my point about the majority of frontline NHS staff avoiding the ‘flu and COVID vaccines. This is evidence which cannot be dismissed.
Re “Roman Bystrianyk does not have a degree or any actual research experience in the relevant field”
I found this easily enough, why didn’t you?
“Roman Bystrianyk has been researching the history of diseases and vaccines since 1998. He has an extensive background in health and nutrition as well as a B.S. in engineering and M.S. in computer science.” From
https://dissolvingillusions.com/
He has a fairly similar background to you Thomas, yet you dismiss him. You have evidence yet you dismiss it or refuse to address it. Your mind is closed to the truth.
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Once again I had to reply to one of your previous posts. We used up all the comment layers. Anyway,
“You don’t remember? Yet you make a claim it was insulting?” … that doesn’t make sense. I removed your comment because it was insulting. Remembering an anagram is different. However, since the anagram became a point of discussion I probably shouldn’t have remove it. But as I’ve told you repeatedly you can repost the anagram, as well as the entire comment, so we can move on. You said yourself that you saved it.
You say “We are trying to analysis evidence and logic” – yes let’s stick to evidence and logic but don’t underestimate the value of probabilistic considerations. You say “….I rely on my observations and the logic that vaccines cause harm to varying degrees to many and harming oneself does not lead to future benefit.” That is not logic or evidence, that’s called misunderstanding how something works. Minor harm resulting in greater benefit is very common and hardly illogical, for example, surgery, dental work, strength training, even just wearing your seat belt.
Regarding Roman Bystrianyk – you said “I found this easily enough, why didn’t you? Roman Bystrianyk has been researching the history of diseases and vaccines since 1998…..” Actually, I did read that, but Roman Bystrianyk does not have a degree in the relevant field, and his book is not peer reviewed and he has not published peer reviewed scientific research, which is what I meant with my comment. However, the most important point regarding the article you provided was that he used mortality rate graphs to question the effectiveness of vaccines. But vaccines prevent infection, they don’t change the risk of death after you are already sick, at least not much. The article was misleading.
When I create what I call a super fact, I begin by finding a simply stated fact that is important but surprising or disputed (among non-experts) and then I proceed to find out whether it is true with a high degree of certainty, which is the biggest job. I look at the evidence such as collected data, repeatable experiments, studies, links/correlations that have been demonstrated to be causation (not just correlation), or the opposite, if there is no correlation, then you can’t have causation. I make sure that I understand the evidence, and that I have several pieces of evidence. If it is possible to determine whether there is scientific consensus, I might use that as evidence too. As we’ve seen, using scientific consensus that is based on research and studies is not the appeal to authority fallacy. It is a rational argument. However, more importantly, if it is clear that there is no scientific consensus then I cannot use this “claim/factoid” as a super fact. I keep some and discard some ideas.
In my post I might add personal anecdotes as well, not because that is scientific evidence (it is not) but because it is often more effective than real scientific evidence in convincing people who are dismissive of evidence or at least to get them to think. One example is my example pointing out that all the doctors we know vaccinate themselves and their children and they should certainly know better than you or I do. It isn’t good evidence, but it should make you question your own cocksure conviction.
I have not gone through this procedure for the issue we are discussing now but I am thinking that I could get started. First some evidence.
Exhibit A: Take a look at this graph showing the Measles cases in the United States, 1919 to 2025. Soon after the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963 the number of cases in the US dropped sharply. Look at the peak in 1964. Also take a look at this graph for polio. The polio vaccine came in 1955. Look at the peak in 1954. Then look at the other diseases in the lower left of the first graph. The mumps vaccine came in 1967 and rubella in 1969. The story repeats itself for different diseases and at different times. Coincidental correlation cannot explain this. It is evidence for causation. In addition, while other healthcare improvements, environmental improvements, etc., could possibly explain a drop in a mortality rate drop, at least at a slower rate, those factors cannot explain a sharp drop in infections.
Now lets move on to the next piece of evidence. Since I am allowing two links per comment I have to split the comment.
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Once again Thomas you have refused to answer my point about the majority of frontline NHS staff avoiding the ‘flu and COVID vaccines. I must therefore assume you think the staff, which includes doctors, who have not had these vaccines are wrong to have done so.
If you reply avoiding this issue then I will assume I am correct that you do think the frontline staff are wrong.
I will then review your 4 comments.
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Continued from above
Exhbit B: Very few people—about 3 out of 100 people who get 2 doses of measles vaccine (or about 7 out of 100 people who get 1 dose of a measles vaccine) will still get measles if exposed to the virus. However, if a person is unvaccinated and exposed to measles, there is a 90% chance they will become infected.
I might as well add an anecdote, not as evidence but as a point of reflection. As I mentioned I got the measles when I was a kid in third grade. This was before the measles vaccine was available in northern Sweden. The whole class got sick at the same time. Only three kids were spared. Measles was a horrible disease. Now I don’t know any young person who has gotten measles.
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Continued from above
Exhibit C: We know smallpox was eradicated by vaccines, after killing 300 million people in the 20th century, due to evidence from the global eradication program, which used a targeted vaccination strategy. The World Health Organization (WHO) certified the eradication in 1980 after observing that the decline in cases was directly linked to a massive, coordinated global vaccination campaign and focused containment efforts, not just general public health improvements. Improvements like better sanitation would not have been able to stop the virus’s transmission as effectively as the vaccine, especially since smallpox spreads easily and has a specific, easily identifiable disease presentation.
In particular, a strategy, known as surveillance-containment or ring vaccination, led to the disappearance of smallpox in eastern Nigeria even though the population coverage was less than 50%. Basically, they distributed vaccines to areas and around areas where there was infection. You cannot explain how this worked so well by only considering general public health improvements.
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Exhibit D: Unsurprisingly, nearly all 2025 cases have occurred in those who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown. Cases have been reported across a wide age range, indicating that this outbreak was years in the making due to long-standing gaps in measles vaccine coverage. How can that be if vaccines don’t work?
I think that is good enough for now
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Refused?! I am not under any obligation to respond to every point you bring up, nor do I have the time to. I don’t know much about the health authorities in your country, but I looked it up. So, about half, slightly less than half in 2024 are not getting the covid and flu vaccine. In my 60 year long life I have gotten the flu vaccine 3-4 times because I don’t consider it very effective or necessary, but not for a second would I agree with the statement that vaccines (in general) do more harm than good, or that they don’t work. It is not a very relevant point.
In addition to responding to my list of evidence feel free to list your own evidence and explain why it is scientifically valid evidence (you can post your anagram too).
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alphaandomega21, more badgering, second guessing, nonsense, and not a single word addressing the actual evidence such as the studies I brought up (are you refusing?). It is time to end this discussion. It is a big time waster. I deleted your latest comment.
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It’s my opinion that everything is up for debate and should be. As a psychiatric nurse, I cared for a lot of autistic children. Since there is a broad spectrum, each child presented differently. Treatment was tailored to the child. But a common symptom was the child’s inability to tolerate over-stimulation. Even if a genetic link is present, the social environment has changed over the decades. Kids are constantly exposed to TV, music, cell phones, the Internet, loud noise, traffic, too many people, too much activity, etc. Adults have a hard time living under these conditions. How can we expect our children to be any different?
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Regarding vaccines being ruled out as a cause of autism (as defined but the way we diagnose it) I just follow the scientific consensus and the large number of studies ruling it out. However, there can be many other causes, some we know about, some we don’t. But I think what you are saying about TV, cell phones, etc., makes a lot of sense. My younger son has high functioning autism, and he gets easily over-stimulated from too much of that kind of stuff as well as loud and busy environments.
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Thanks for sharing that, Thomas!
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Thank you Dawn
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Thomas, I spent quite some time reading your article and the fascinating comment thread that has sprang up from it. While I don’t feel comfortable sharing my views on this occasion, I just want to say that I think it’s great (and so important) that you chose to raise this in the wake of recent political events. It has given me a lot to absorb, on a subject I knew little about despite having an autistic cousin.
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Thank you so much leighton. I appreciate you taking so much time reading including the comments. I am sorry to hear that your cousin has autism. It is an issue for us too. I have a couple of relatives with severe autism and a few with high functioning autism including my one of my two sons.
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