Now that President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a large organization with a $1.7 trillion budget that manages research into both autism and vaccines, his unfounded claims that childhood vaccinations cause autism are coming under increased scrutiny.
It has been convincingly disproved that childhood immunizations cause autism, a misconception put out in 1998 by a British physician who was later barred from practicing medicine in the United Kingdom.
Vaccines are safe, according to hundreds of research. According to estimates from the World Health Organization, vaccinations have prevented 154 million deaths worldwide in the last 50 years.
Kennedy has blamed vaccinations for the significant increase in autism diagnoses in recent decades, which have skyrocketed from an estimated 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 36 now. Kennedy is a proponent of several health-related conspiracy theories.
According to research, a large portion of the growth may be attributed to improved diagnostic technologies, a shift in the definition of autism to cover milder forms on the spectrum that were previously unrecognized, and more awareness and screening for the disorder.
Ari Ne’eman, co-founder of the nonprofit Autistic Self Advocacy Network and an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said, “The anti-vaccine movement has been taking advantage of families of autistic people for a very long time, promoting a market for pseudo-scientific treatments that don’t provide the answers they’re looking for and that can expose autistic people to real harm.” “More debunked conspiracy theories that link vaccines and autism are not the solution.”
People are more likely to believe conspiracy theories about diseases with known causes than about conditions like autism, whose causes are complicated and unclear, according to Timothy Caulfield, research director at the University of Alberta’s Health Law Institute in Canada.
For instance, people are less likely to conjecture about other possible origins for Down syndrome, which has long been thought to be brought on by an extra copy of chromosome 21 and results in intellectual difficulties.
Senior scientist and training director of the Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and clinical psychologist Judith Miller remarked, “It’s really a shame because there are vulnerable families [of people with autism] who need our support.” “Every hour and dollar spent attempting to disprove a conspiracy theory is an hour and dollar lost that could have been used to learn how to support families.”
A complicated situation
According to Manish Arora, a professor of environmental medicine and climate science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, determining the origins of autism is challenging since it is not a single condition.
According to Arora, autism is a spectrum disorder rather than a single, specific illness. “There are a lot of different things under one roof.”
“There are many paths to autism and many presentations of autism,” Miller stated, despite the fact that individuals with autism frequently have comparable skills and difficulties.
Autism is a neurological and developmental disorder that affects how individuals connect with others, communicate, learn, and conduct. Researchers have identified a number of risk factors for the disorder, the majority of which are present before birth.
Many characteristics that are occasionally observed in individuals with autism are also present in those who have not received a diagnosis, such as sensitivity to loud noises or difficulty interpreting social cues. Arora, the founder and CEO of a start-up business that studies biomarkers for autism and other neurological illnesses, stated that doctors diagnose autism based on a person’s behavior and that there is no easy test for the condition like there is for diabetes or COVID.
It is considerably easier to determine the cause of infectious diseases like influenza, which is brought on by the flu virus.
“Vaccines are the one thing we know doesn’t cause autism,” said Catherine Lord, a psychologist and researcher at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine’s Center for Autism Research and Treatment, even as scientists continue to investigate the variables that affect the development of autistic symptoms.
susceptibility to genetic
The fact that autism may run in families has long led doctors to believe that genes play a significant part in the disorder. For instance, if one of the identical twins, who have all of the same DNA, has autism, the other twin typically does too. According to a review of research papers, the likelihood that one of the fraternal twins, who share around half of their DNA, would also have autism varies from 53% to 67%.
According to Miller, researchers have found over 100 genes linked to autism, and it is thought that genes are involved in 60–80% of cases.
According to Dr. Gregory Cejas, medical director of the Washington University School of Medicine’s Autism Clinical Center and Fragile X Clinic, “the genetics of autism have never been better understood.” “We’re making significant progress in understanding the known genetic causes of autism.”
However, it is evident that genes do not account for all cases of autism.
Autism differs greatly from single-gene disorders such as sickle cell anemia or cystic fibrosis. According to Lord, scientists think that environmental exposures and genetic susceptibility combine to cause autistic symptoms in people.
According to Lord, “many, many distinct genetic patterns have been linked to autism, but none of them are exclusively linked to autism, nor are they always linked to autism.”
For instance, the most prevalent known cause of autism is fragile X syndrome, which is brought on by a gene mutation on the X chromosome. However, Miller noted that only a small percentage of kids with the genetic mutation go on to acquire autism.
Some people may be more susceptible to autistic features as a result of this mutation, whereas others who carry the same mutation may not experience autistic symptoms because they are protected by as-yet-unidentified protective mechanisms.
Since autistic symptoms often appear between the ages of 12 and 15 months, when children receive the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination, some have linked the vaccine to autism.
The majority of the genetic disorders that impact our lives and health, however, aren’t noticeable at birth, according to Miller. Although the genetic information will have been present throughout, symptoms or traits won’t appear until later.
Prenatal susceptibility
According to Arora, a large number of the recognized risk factors for autistic traits manifest either prior to or during delivery. Autism is more likely to develop in babies who suffer birth difficulties, such as the umbilical cord wrapping around their neck.
So do prematurely born newborns, maybe as a result of anything that occurred during pregnancy.
According to Miller, children who have older fathers and potentially older moms are likewise marginally more likely to get an autism diagnosis. It’s unclear if socioeconomic factors or anything in the biology of older parents contribute to a child’s increased risk of autism. It’s probable that older parents have greater access to medical treatment, increasing the likelihood that their kid may be diagnosed with autism.
Numerous studies have shown that a mother’s health affects her child’s risk of autism in a number of ways: Pregnant women who experienced high levels of air pollution or who suffered a major illness like the flu or pneumonia are more likely to have children with autism.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s Ne’eman stated that while he has nothing against fundamental biological study on autism or its causes, he believes that these studies don’t go far enough in assisting persons with autism in overcoming the obstacles they encounter on a daily basis.
He points out that support and services for individuals with autism account for just 8.4% of the $419 million spent on autism research in the US.
According to him, “we need an autism research agenda that reflects the true priorities of autistic people and our families: inclusion in the community and supports across the lifespan.”
