Does the MMR vaccine really make children autistic?

The MMR vaccine protects against diseases you don’t really want to get measles, mumps and rubellaand has been part of the compulsory vaccinations in France since 1^um January 2018.

It is given in two phases: a first injection every 12 months of the child and a second about 16 months. The injection is given subcutaneously in the thigh and is usually well tolerated. Like many vaccines, side effects such as injection site pain, redness or swelling, fever, and sometimes swelling may occur within 8 to 10 days of receiving the vaccine.

In short, nothing wrong, even if it is not pleasant. However, fake news still exists, saying this the MMR vaccine would make children autistic. But what is this stuff again?

Could the MMR vaccine really be making children autistic?

For the little story, the origin of this controversy dates back to 1998when Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor, published a study in the leading British medical journal The Lancet. He states there that the MMR vaccine is, in its combined form, dangerous for childrenand that it is better to choose a monovalent vaccine.

The doctor would get results for his study testing the vaccine on 12 children and allegedly concluded that the MMR vaccine was responsible for a picture combining autism and digestive disorders.

After a press conference in a London hospital held by Andrew Wakefield, the British press took hold of the subject and spread it very widely, leading, as the site indicates vaccination-info-service.fr ” a significant decline in MMR vaccination coverage since 1998, causing resurgence of measles. This disease, in constant regression from 1994-1995, thus became topical again starting from the year 2000, two years after the publication of the article “.

Nevertheless, Andrew Wakefield’s study has been scientifically challengeddemonstrating this large population studies have not shown a link between measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination and autism spectrum disorders “.

More, ” it has emerged that the data presented in this article derives from a fraud: inter alia, the children had no digestive lesions, the delay between vaccination and signs of autism was not as reported by the parents, and their inclusion in the study was a result of the parents’ desire to sue the vaccine manufacturer and not the observation of a particular clinical condition “.

The story doesn’t end there, since Brian Deer, journalist, decided to investigate the matter further and published an article on the British Medical Journal which revealed the extent of the doctor’s fraud: the latter had been remuneratedeven before the publication of his writing, by a law firm” with the aim of establishing a scientific link between vaccination and a disease, which would facilitate the implementation of a large-scale denunciation ” AND also plans to commercialize a test to screen for “autistic enterocolitis”with an estimated profitability of several million pounds each year.

A trade that could have been profitable, with dramatic consequences.

The fake news about the MMR vaccine

Years after this scandal, the MMR vaccine continues to generate controversy. While a Danish study, published in 2019, made it possible to do soclaim, scientifically speaking, that the MMR vaccine would neither increase the risk of autism nor trigger itthe rumors keep running.

We asked the emergency pediatrician To be or not to be Toubib who shares on his social networks, but also in his book, his advice sheets for parents, what he thinks of this fake news:

As the doctor states in the video below, autism is a multifactorial developmental disorder, the cause of which has not yet been found. Precisely for this reason it is difficult to manage, from a medical point of view. But in no case does the MMR vaccine “trigger” autism, or amplify it, as one can sometimes read.

MMR is a vaccine that protects humansespecially children, against three viral diseases whose consequences can be serious and potentially fatal. But it doesn’t “make” autistic, no. It’s fake news.