Within the History of Vaccines website, no other page gets more views and attention than our article on vaccines and autism. is viewed millions of times a year by people from all over the world. It also ranks highly in search engine results, and is used as a reference by people discussing the alleged association of vaccines with autism.
But, like everything in science, the article needs to change based on new evidence and new information. And here is how we are changing it...
First, the article had a , making it easy to read for people with college degrees and higher education. That makes the article difficult to read for most of our readers. We have rewritten the article to make it readable at a high school level. While this is not ideal, a topic that is heavy in scientific terminology around vaccines and behavioral health can only be simplified so much. Going forward, we will continue to simplify the language and expand the readability of our articles, so that more people can fully understand them, and share them widely to people who probably do not have the privilege of secondary school education.
Next, the information on prevalence (existing cases) of autism was through 2010. That information has been . Prevalence has continued to increase with each measurement. This is important because thimerosal, one of the chemicals anti-vaccine organizations blame for autism, was removed from most childhood vaccines in 2001. If thimerosal causes autism, the prevalence should have leveled off or gone down. It did not.
Then there is the question itself. Science has given us now 20-plus years of evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. So we’re changing the title of the page to “Why have vaccines been ruled out as a cause of autism?” It is still a question, but it removes the implication that vaccines cause autism... Or the fuel to the conspiracy theory of “they wouldn’t ask if there was nothing there.”
Most of all -- and I hope you see the theme in the article -- we as a society need to move away from trying to find cures for autism and into a collective mindset of finding better ways to diagnose autism at an earlier age. That lead time from diagnosis allows for better interventions, so autistic children can be accommodated in a neurotypical world. Perhaps most importantly, we hope to prevent families from being fooled into unproven and even for autism.
If you wish to read the previous version of the page, please , and we will be happy to provide you with the text of the earlier version as a PDF document.