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Negative Link between MMR Vaccine and Autism

Recently , the immunization of humans to potentially debilitating diseases has been a priority concern of most governments and health promotion programmes . These immunization programmes usually target infants and children , which has made the issue of vaccine safety a great concern among parents . The safety of immunization procedures and vaccines used has become a significant issue as immunization involves administering viruses into the human body in to prevent future infections . Among the vaccines which have generated a lot of interest among parents and the scientific

community is the Measles , Mumps , and Rubella (MMR ) vaccine . The safety of MMR vaccination among children became a cause of concern for many parents and health experts after some parents claimed that their children became autistic shortly after exposure to the MMR vaccine . This concern has since discouraged parents from having their children vaccinated , leading to steep declines in the number of children being subjected to the MMR vaccine (BBC News , 2005 Some countries , like Japan , even replaced the MMR vaccine with single vaccines as a response to the widely-publicized claim that the MMR was associated with autism (Coghlan , 2005 BBC News , 2005 ) However , a deeper examination of the issue reveals that most of the concerns and the controversy surrounding MMR vaccination , particularly its ability to trigger or to cause autism , stems more from media-generated and sensationalism of news rather than from a factual account

The link between MMR and autism was first suggested by Wakefield , et al (1993 , whose article in the Lancet claimed that measles virus is capable of causing persistent infection of the intestine ' and that exposure to the measles virus increases the risk of developing Crohn 's disease , which could be developed as a response to the virus (p . 345 Later , the results of another study by Wakefield , et . al (1998 suggested that a persistent infection of the intestine that was associated with measles virus (similar to the one found in the previous study ) was found among children who exhibited regressive developmental diss or autistic tendencies (p . 640 ) The implication of these studies pointed to the possible adverse effect of children 's exposure to the measles virus in the MMR vaccine as a potential cause of autism

Public perception that the MMR vaccine could be a possible trigger for autism in young children was further strengthened by the results of another research which confirmed an association between between the presence of measles virus and gut pathology in children with developmental dis (Uhlmann , et . al , 2002 ,

. 5 ) Some people later attributed the MMR vaccine 's link to autism to thimerosal , a mercury-containing preservative used in most vaccines in low doses (Center for Disease Control and Prevention , 2007

Undoubtedly , the results of studies suggesting the occurrence of a new form of immune mediated inflammatory bowel disease in a cohort of children with developmental dis (Uhlmann , et . al , 2002 ,

. 1 easily caught up with the mass media , which then fired the public 's imagination . Duke...