If you don’t know anyone with autism, you probably have only heard of it through the media, which often does not provide accurate information. The best example of this is the “vaccines cause autism” controversy that is still continuing. 

Put simply, vaccines do not cause autism. Autism is a developmental disability which means it starts in utero with how the brain develops. Vaccines do not change your DNA, so it cannot cause autism. 

The study first claiming that vaccines cause autism has been debunked numerous times and has been retracted from all scientific publications that mentioned it. Research ethics councils have stated the study was unethical and it also only used 12 participants which is an extremely limited sample size. It was found to have used fraudulent data and the primary researcher, Andrew Wakefield, has been discredited for this study. 

The idea that a child is better off dead from a preventable illness than to grow up autistic still persists in modern culture, even 20 years after that study was originally published. If I could talk to people who were choosing not to vaccinate for this reason, I would ask them why they hate people like me so much that they would rather have an unhealthy child.

Autism may be considered a disability, but I am of the opinion that the rest of the world is to blame for this. If autistic people were allowed to live as they choose, I do not think it would be considered a disability and there would not be so many people vehemently opposed to it.

The Vaccine-Autism Myth Started 20 Years Ago. Here's Why It Still Endures Today

Lancet retracts 12-year-old Article Linking Autism to MMR Vaccines