Andrew Wakefield Essay

Over the last 30 years the access to information has grown exponentially, which has made it very easy to find evidence to support any argument. This has been very apparent in the discussion surrounding the supposed link between vaccines and autism. This argument was started in 1998, when Andrew Wakefield claimed that he found a link between vaccines and autism. Wakefield stated that the MMR vaccine caused inflammation in the intestines, which would then release toxins into the bloodstream, into the brain, and thus causing autism. Although Wakefield has since lost his medical license, the internet is still littered with pages written by people still trying to make a link between vaccines and autism. Why are parents more scared of their child having autism than dying from a completely preventable disease? “Autism, or autism …show more content…
Andrew Wakefield was a gastroenterologist and medical researcher based in London. His study was based on a group of 12 children, with an average age of 6 years old, who were recently given the MMR vaccine, and 8 of which were found to show signs of autistic behaviour. In the study it was found that all 12 children presented “intestinal abnormalities, ranging from lymphoid nodular hyperplasia to aphthoid ulceration,” (Wakefield, et al., 1998).Wakefield connected these findings to the MMR vaccine, and formulated a theory as to how it could also cause autism. “The upset intestines, he conjectured, let toxins loose in the bloodstream, which then traveled to the brain” (Mooney, 2009). Although Wakefield’s study only included a small sample size of only 12 children, was uncontrolled in design, and the conclusions were speculative in nature, “the paper received wide publicity, and MMR vaccination rates began to drop because parents were concerned about the risk of autism after vaccination.” (Rao & Chuttaranjan,