Wakefield Hypothesis

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One question asked by many concerned parents ask is if vaccines are healthy for their young children, and will the vaccines give them autism. while there was a paper published on the correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism, the paper is very misleading. There are multiple studies that show no correlation between the MMR vaccine and the rate of ASD in the population. The paper also has many flaws including the absence of a control and children in the trial showing symptoms of ASD before they were administered the vaccine.
Studies show that there is no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism. In Sweden's, scientist Gilberg and Heijbel conducted a study and found that there was no link to the increase in the diagnosis of autism
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There are several issues that make the Wakefield hypothesis invalid. One reason that the Wakefield hypothesis is invalid is because of the failure to include a control. The failure to include a control prevents the determination of whether the occurrence of autism from the MMR vaccine was causal or coincidental. Of the test group used only 12 children were found to suffer from ASD, but 12 is not a large enough number of people to collect reliable data. Given the prevalence of autism in England, where he conducted his study, about 25 children a month would receive the diagnosis soon after receiving the MMR vaccine by chance alone. Wakefield's findings of gastrointestinal symptoms did not predate ASD in several of the children included in his test. Also, in my previous paragraphs I mention his data was not supported by many tests that were centered around his hypothesis and findings. (Gerber & …show more content…
Most people feel that the effects of the vaccine are a bigger threat to themselves or their child because they have forgotten completely about how serious some of these diseases are. Much of the speculation against diseases to this date stray from Andrew Wakefield's paper which states that 12 children were reported to having ASD shortly after having the MMR vaccine administered to them. The media postered his paper all over the place and the percentage of people that got the MMR vaccine in England dropped from 90% nationally to nearly 70%. Even though there wasn't enough solid data to back Wakefield's paper, many people did stop getting their children vaccinated. The Lancet, Wakefield's paper, was a highly biased sample in which there were no controls and no case validations. The reported associations have yet to be confirmed by anyone, anywhere in the world, and the paper was highly criticized and been referred to as “poor science,” and yet, it still puts questions into people's minds on the safety of vaccines.

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