Everyone knows that vaccines are made from the same stuff McDonald's uses to make its chicken nuggets. Conclusion? Don't vaccinate your children, feed them chicken nuggets instead.
In seriousness though the reason we live in a world where ordinary people can say things like 'Measles is harmless' is because we vaccinate against it. Yes you're right, measles is harmless, in a vaccinated society. But you shouldn't just look at it from your own point of view, you should think of it from the view of children as a whole; the overall percentage that any professional has claimed get autism is in the decimals, whereas the numbers of children protected from MMR are in the millions - so even if vaccination did cause autism out of every 100,000 children vaccinated 1 would get it and all 100,000 would benefit from the vaccination. Seems like a pretty solid payoff to me even if this were the case, which it isn't.
The fact is there is no verifiable evidence accepted by the medical profession as a whole, let alone the WHO, which points to vaccination causing autism. As someone else in this thread said already (I apologise but I forget who) the rising rates of autism are due to improved methods of detecting the condition and not an actual rise overall. Any sociologist worth their salt will tell you that as new factors of society are discovered you will see a 'rise' in cases until such factors are fully understood.
Additionally claiming that something like a vaccination will cause autism shows a woeful lack of knowledge as to how psychological disorders like autism work and how the brain functions. Is it conceivably possible that something we inject into ourselves once will radically and permanently alter our brain chemistry? Of course. Is it likely? No. Take the effects of drugs like heroin; it takes prolonged usage over a period of time to cause significant permanent damage to brain function and though I certainly don't advocate injecting yourself with heroin even once, one injection is highly unlikely to cause autism or anything else of a permanent nature.
So why is it that so many parents complain that their child has developed autism after being vaccinated? Well its a simple misconception which many people are guilty of and it includes the mistake of muddling up causation with correlation. 'My child was diagnosed with autism today, they were vaccinated last year. That must be the cause.' Actually the chance of diagnosis of autism following vaccination is high because of the age of children when they are vaccinated and not because of a link between vaccination and autism itself. Children are still in a relatively early stage of psychological development when they are vaccinated and using current methods it is difficult to conclusively diagnose a child with autism when they are that young. In fact many medical professionals are highly reluctant to diagnose a child with autism or any other mental illness without overwhelming evidence even once they have reached the age of 12, yet by the age of 12 most children will have been vaccinated for multiple things.
Let's use an example that I personally have observed; a child was brought to a pediatric psychologist at the age of 6 after comments and complaints about their unusual behaviour at school. The parents have no mental health issues themselves, however there is a history on the father's side of depression, bipolar and autism - however despite this history and a glut of evidence from the school no diagnosis will immediately be given. Instead the specialist chooses to observe the child over a period of time, going to the school from time to time to run tests on behaviour and thought patterns. However since no significant issues arise no diagnosis is given and no action is taken. Seven years later the child begins puberty and significant behavioural issues are noted; once against they are taken to a specialist who assesses them, they speculate that there may be evidence of autism, however due to the onset of puberty the child is not diagnosed as it could simply be the chemical fluctuations characteristic of this period of a person's development which are causing the issues. Another four years pass and the child is brought to the specialists again after suffering severe insomnia and mood swings which are interfering with their ability to achieve at school despite their clear intellect; only now are specialists readily willing to diagnose autism and in this case bipolar disorder.
Now the diagnosis came after all of the child's vaccines had been administered, the last when they were 15, but if we look at the child's history we see clearly that the problems existed long before all vaccinations were given. The fact that diagnosis and periods of assessment came at times when the child would have been vaccinated has nothing to do with the vaccination, but rather the developmental process as the child grows up. Vaccines are administered at crucial points in a child's development, points when things are in flux physically and mentally; diagnosis of autism and such like is naturally going to correlate with these developmental stages as a result.
Of course the scenario I have shared is not uniform of every case, and children do develop at different rates; but if one observes the developmental patterns of the child then one can usually see a clear correlation between times when behavioural problems are assessed and critical developmental stages in the child.
