Do Vaccines Really Cause Autism?

The controversy continues, but vaccinations do not cause autism. That is the short answer. Why does the controversy continue? Because the controversy has become a conspiracy theory.

It started with Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Dr. Wakefield published a research paper in the Lancet in 1998, which later was debunked. Besides the Lancet, his other research papers were  in Neurotoxicology (withdrawn), American Journal of Gastroenterology (retracted), and another Lancet paper (retracted). Wakefield published a book titled Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines: The Truth Behind a Tragedy.

A news article in the Telegraph stated that Wakefield said his only concern was for children. Nevertheless, this issue with vaccines caused Wakefield to flee the UK for the USA. The General Medical Council in the UK censured Wakefield for misconduct in 2010.

This is sad because Dr. Wakefield has an impressive work history. Being a fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1985, Wakefield received a Wellcome Trust to travel to study abroad. He returned to the UK in 1980s to further his research interests. It was in the 1990s when he began studying the link between autism and vaccines, and this is when Wakefield and his colleagues started to get into trouble in 1996 with an article titled Is Measles Vaccination a Risk Factor for Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

In 2016 Wakefield wrote in part and directed Vaxxed: From Cover Up to Catastrophe, produced by Del Bigtree. In 2019 a sequel was produced by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., (RFK, Jr) Vaxxed II: The People's Truth. In 2024 a second sequel, Vaxxed III: Authorized to Kill by RFK Jr.'s organization Children's Health Defense.

Where is Dr. Andrew Wakefield today? He is still promoting the belief that vaccines cause autism as an anti-vaccine activist. ThinkProgress, The Washington Post, The Guardian,Wired, John Hopkins Bloom-berg School of Public Health, Steven Salzberg, and Paul Offit have all decried him as a conspiracy theorist. 

Children of the Stars

 

   The organization Autism China says that "autism and China are seldom heard together." Children with Autism in China are often called children of the stars. Some claim that the term is pejorative but it is not. It is a poetic, affectionate term referring to these autistic children. Children of the Stars is also the name of a 2007 50 minute long documentary about autistic children in the People's Republic of China at the Stars and Rain School, a school for autistic children. The documentary seems to not be available on DVD or streaming but the trailer can be found here.  

    The documentary follows 5 year old Feng Jia Wei and his parents who traveled across China to enroll their son in the school that is also the first NGO dedicated school to autistic children. A long synopsis of the documentary can be found here. Even more recently, new advances have been made in neuroscience using accupuncture in treating autistic children with co-occuring conditions.

    Nevertheless, The children of the stars is fraught with issues. The mother of Zi Han tells her story. The mother who chose to remain anonymous thought her world collapsed. The mother stated that children are often disallowed from participating in regular school with other children.

    In conclusion, let us embrace the children of the stars and adult autistics in China as we embrace the rest of the world's autistic children and adults.

Thanks for reading my post. Please leave a comment, whether you agree or disagree to drum up some discussion. Thank you!

Movie and Event Review: The Reason I Jump and event at the Loft in Tucson, Arizona

On April 30 there was a viewing of the documentary The Reason Why I Jump at the Loft Cinema in Tucson, Arizona. The Reason Why I Jump is an excellent film that described the world of the person with nonverbal autism. I was not able to attend the event, but I did watch the movie through a different venue. The movie review website Rotten Tomatoes gives The Reason Why I Jump 97% and it has won several awards, such as the Audience Award for World Cinema-Documentary at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Best Documentary at the 2020 Denver Film Festival, the Best Foreign Film as the Rome Film Festival among other film festivals, and a the book the documentary is adapted from is a New York Times Best Seller.

    The Reason Why I Jump is based on the autobiography by a thirteen year old Japanese boy Naoki Higashida, and translated into English by Keiko Yoshido and her husband David Mitchell being published in English by Random House.

    The Book has not been without controversy though. Organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association have espoused the method of communication used to facilitate communication to transmit the book is pseudoscience. Doctor and parent of a child with autism also claim the communication methods used to write the book are a myth.

        Despite the controversy and oddness surrounding The Reason Why I Jump, regardless of who the author was of the book, the book and documentary feature do a great job at describing the element of nonverbal autism

    Please leave a comment, whether you agree or disagree to drum up discussion of the post topic.