[troutman]

Watch "Vaccines—Calling the Shots," airing Wednesday, September 10 at 9/8c on PBS. ‪#‎vaccinesNOVA‬

The Autism-Vaccine Myth

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/au...cine-myth.html

The assertion that vaccines could be linked to autism burst onto the international stage with the 1998 publication of a paper in the British journal The Lancet. Sensationalist media coverage of the claim followed. The paper, which suggested a link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, was eventually retracted in 2010. Even before the complete retraction, however, in 2004, ten of the paper’s 13 authors cosigned a partial retraction of its main interpretation.

What was the impact of the alleged vaccine-autism connection?

What the public didn't know in 1998 was that the now-retracted study, which involved just 12 children, would turn out to have some serious flaws—and even to contain apparently falsified data. The 12 years between its publication and its retraction, however, left a lot of time for the unfounded and never-confirmed vaccine-autism link to take hold in the minds of worried parents—and thus for vaccination rates to suffer.

Here are some highlights along the scientific journey the vaccine-autism hypothesis made from its 1998 publication in The Lancet to today. The American Academy of Pediatrics has compiled an expanded list of relevant studies.

The emerging scientific picture of autism is a condition that begins during fetal development, as a result of both genetic and environmental influences.