Luis Pavon

Nathan Cole
English 2010
11 December 2016

This essay will attempt to persuade an audience who believe vaccines are harmful
to children, and therefore shouldnt vaccinate them. Using data from scholarly
articles and peer reviewed journals will explain how and why the idea that vaccines
are harmful is a blatant lie.
Ever since Edward Jenner discovered vaccination in the late 18th century, it has
evolved over time and improved by scientists such as Louis Pasteur, who invented a
vaccine used to immunize people against rabies. Along the way, more diseases
became treatable by this means of immunization. Many people viewed vaccines as
a godsend, a means to end suffering and death by preventing infectious diseases
from contaminating healthy people.
In the past couple of decades, there has been a scandal regarding immunization
vaccines and their supposed correlation to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Many
parents, out of fear and irrational decisions, have been withholding immunization
vaccines from their children, as they believe they would cause their children to
develop autism. Large debates between scientists who support the idea that such
vaccines cause autism in young children and those who oppose that idea have
sprung during that time, and both sides provide substantial evidence to support
their claims.
In February of 1998, British former surgeon and medical researcher Andrew
Wakefield published a paper with several of his colleagues which purports that there
is a correlation between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and Autism
Spectrum Disorder (ASD). His paper proved to be a deadly shot in the dark, as he
did not foresee the consequences of his fraudulent actions because he published his
paper with insufficient data to support his claim, yet still published his findings for
the world to see.
After hearing of his claim, many parents, began to deny their children of MMR
vaccines. Since the publication of his paper, a decrease in the usage of MMR
commenced, and because of this, diseases which could have been prevented in the
U.S. increased dramatically in the past 15 years. For example, a measles outbreak
in the Disneyland theme park, which began in 2014, spread to other states and
infected about 100 people.
Andrew Wakefield, the revered British surgeon who started the Vaccine-Autism

controversy with his fraudulent paper, stands by his claim strongly. In his paper, he
wrote In eight children, the onset of behavioral problems had been linked, either by
the parents or by the childs physician, with MMR vaccination. When news of his
claim reached the public, British news media responded with the headline
"DOCTORS LINK AUTISM TO MMR VACCINE". This report led vaccination rates in the
U.K. to tremendously decrease, which helped the anti-vaccination movement to set
in motion. The panic was inevitably caused as the public trusted the legitimate
scientists and their publishings in well-known journals.
The anti-vaccinators claimed that certain harmful compounds found inside the
measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are what causes infants to develop autism.
Thimerosal, a mercury-containing organic preservative, is one of these compounds
(Mercury is used in some vaccines in order to prevent their contamination with
bacteria and fungi) These people believe that thimerosal, as well as formaldehyde
and aluminum phosphate, is the main cause of autism in children. The compounds
are harmful to the human body and cause damage to the central nervous system,
which is especially harmful to very young infants, as they are still in early stages of
development.

Anti-vaxxers (slang term used for anti-vaccinators) dont believe all vaccines
cause autism, however. Only those containing said harmful compounds, such as the
measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. They also believe that the
simultaneous administration of multiple vaccines overwhelms and weakens the
immune system, allowing the development of autism and related disorders. Andrew
Wakefield also states that MMR does not protect against measles. Measles vaccines
protect against measles.
On the opposite side of the Vaccine-Autism spectrum exists those who devote
themselves to disprove the link between vaccines and autism. They do so by
carefully examining the reports of those who support the Vaccines cause autism
claim and the terribly flawed paper done by Andrew Wakefield. For example, the
researchers had found that Wakefield had used an insufficient number of subjects
(young children with autism whose symptoms appeared shortly after receiving their
measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine), which does not provide accurate proof
that MMR causes autism.
Ever since Wakefield published his paper that sparked the Vaccine-Autism
controversy, many researchers and scientists began searching for this supposed
link. A study on the perception of the risk of vaccinating children conducted by a
group of researchers investigated Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS),
a vaccine safety surveillance program established in 1990. This system reports of
autism and related disorders caused by autism. When these researchers began
investigating VAERS, they discovered that this system was found to be subject to
many limitations, such as underreporting, incomplete information, and inadequate
data. These factors support the evidence given by researchers who are trying to

disprove the vaccine-autism scandal because the credibility for VAERSs oncelegitimate reports is lost.
With these facts, it should be clear to anti-vaxxers that vaccines, who provide a very
important health factor to people, and especially children, are not harmful in
virtually any way. People should know better than to trust anything they hear,
especially if it has been disproven. In this context, the link between vaccines and
autism has been completely disproven, and a substantial amount of data and
background information is given to support this.