I read Wednesday in the paper about the Ball State University "Truth Movement" and its attempt to persuade Dr. Kent Bullis, director of the Amelia T. Wood Health Center, that a link exists between the preservative thimerosal and autism and Alzheimer's disease. Tony Farmer, president of the student group, mentioned there are "hundreds of thousands of parents of autistic children" whose children had, presumably, become autistic because of the vaccination. As the father of an unborn daughter, the issue definitely affects me, so I decided to do a little bit of digging.
What I found mildly surprised me. Apparently, there is quite a large online community that believes that thimerosal or the MMR vaccination itself cause autism in children. Members of this group point to the fact that the population rate of autism began to rise in the 1970s and 1980s, about the same time widespread vaccinations began to occur, and after vaccinations many children begin to experience symptoms of autism. I was skeptical for two reasons: these alone are elementary logical fallacies, and the Web sites I visited lacked precise documentation.
Then I went to the Web sites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, and I found quite handy refutations of claims of a link between autism and vaccination: a wide spectrum of studies and meta-studies conducted between 1999 and 2008 have shown neither causal nor even temporal links between autism and vaccinations. In 2000 the Institute of Medicine conducted a review of all completed and ongoing studies, published papers and expert testimony regarding vaccination and autism. No link. The American Academy of Pediatrics held an entire conference on MMR vaccination and autism. No link. In 1999 an earlier study that had suggested (but not statistically demonstrated) an autism-vaccination link was refuted by Taylor, et al.
In fact, autism began to rise in 1979 and rates did not change when the MMR vaccine became widespread in 1988. When thimerosal was removed from vaccines in 2001, autism rates did not decline, according to a study of California children published in early 2008. Last September another study attempted to replicate the results of the 1998 study that suggested (but, again, did not statistically demonstrate) an autism-vaccination link. It failed utterly.
Everywhere researchers look, they fail to see a link. If it looks like nothing's there, feels like nothing's there, tastes like nothing's there, smells like nothing's there and sounds like nothing's there, there's probably nothing there. Which brings me back to the Ball State Truth Movement's behavior. Surely a quick search and meta-review of the available facts should be enough to convince anyone, to a first approximation, that there's no link. Because every major medical establishment (the CDC and NIH, in particular) throws its weight behind the lack of a causal link, what does this tell us about people who still agitate for vaccine choice and, in particular, try to educate professionals about their own field?
It tells us about their attitude toward truth. In conjunction with their name and further description on their Facebook group, it seems likely that the "Truth Movement" is composed of conspiracy theorists. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the majority of them aver the offensive claim that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job. Perhaps some of them are ignorant enough of basic science to believe that jumbo jets slamming into buildings at 500 mph, followed by nearly an hour of blazing infernos, are not enough to cause collapse.
Regardless, it is instructive to examine the conspiracy theorist mind-set. It throws out the basic scientific principles of falsifiability and Occam's razor; ironically, instead of actually searching for truth by creating, revising and discarding successively more accurate models, a conspiracy theorist has a particular outcome in mind and must grandfather the evidence (or, more usually, the lack thereof) to fit the conclusions.
This behavior is irrational, illogical and in many cases just plain dumb. Don't let yourself be suckered into the mind-set of anti-vacciners, 9/11 truthers and creationists; free yourself, and with skepticism and scientific rigor test every new idea that presents itself. That's the best way to get at truth. It's the way I'm going to go, at least: my daughter, whom I love more than life itself, will get all of her vaccines.
Write to Neal at necoleman@bsu.edu
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