Childhood Vaccinations Cause Autism

Childhood Vaccinations Cause Autism

Introduction

AIDS is not caused by HIV, vaccines at childhood cause autism, cancer is not caused by smoking and the climate change is nothing to do with the activities of man. Though these statements are generally hard to believe but they are still present among the masses and propagated by the mass media. All these statements come from the people who believe in continuous denial of the evidences and proofs given to them through scientific research and studies. Their arguments are based on different motivations and movements that reject the logical reasoning. Linking autism with childhood vaccination is also one of the other connections that are built upon the denial movements.

Thesis Statement

“Vaccination denial is the cause that people continue to believe that vaccinations cause autism, in spite of substantial evidence that their belief is not true.”

Discussion

A process that implies the rhetorical arguments to make an argument a legitimate debate when there is none; it is an approach which believes in refusing the proposition on which scientists have developed a consensus is called Denialism. Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee have transferred the concept to the denial of the scientific evidence on the health effects of tobacco consumption - and in vaccinating one can observe this phenomenon also (Specter, 2009). The denialism is perhaps an irrational defect of the doubting “scientific investigators” and not that of the concerned public, especially those parents with children who developed autism shortly after receiving their vaccines. There is now a substantial population of families who have refused vaccination for their children. So far, as the records show, the incidence of autism in those unvaccinated children is zero. The statistical absence of autism in unvaccinated children might be considered possible evidence that there is a link between vaccination and rates of autism (Specter, 2009). The autism rate has mushroomed from 1 in 10,000 children 60 years ago to an epidemic of 1 in 100 at the present time. The cause is unknown, but 60 years ago vaccines were not given until children were five to six months old or weaned from their mothers (Rutter, 2005). At that time, doctors gave only eight vaccinations. Now there are 29, and they start at birth, even in cases of prematurity.

The process of denialism possesses certain characteristics and so is the case with vaccine denialism. First is the conspiracy identification (Washington and Cook, 2011). It occurs when it is argued that a relation is not evident because the subject has been studied independently by the researchers and they have reached the same conclusion, particularly when vast scientific majority starts believing something is true. For instance, the recent times have seen emergence of anti-vaccination movement, and the same seeks to include people who blame MMR (Measles-Mumps-Rubella) as the major reason behind autism and link the same to the reporting that mercury toxicity leads to a large number of diseases and issues in human beings. Both tht groups generally meet on the matter of thimerosal, a preservative based ...