MMR vaccine, Safe or Not

Is the vaccine safe?

There are now a large number of studies that show no evidence at all of any link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Autism is a developmental disorder which is usually diagnosed in pre-school children. The original research which suggested a link has now been discredited. The National Autistic Society in the UK has issued a statement saying that ‘there is no link between autism and the MMR vaccine’.

Below is a list of studies and their findings. Click on the links to view the abstracts (summaries) of the scientific papers:

• A Danish study of over 650,000 children found no increased risk for autism after MMR vaccination (Hviid et al., 2019 )
• An analysis of studies involving over 1 million children found no relationship between vaccination and autism. There was no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism development in children, and the study also found no evidence of a link between thiomersal and autism development (Taylor et al., 2014 ).
• There is no increased incidence of autism in children vaccinated with MMR compared with unvaccinated children (Farrington et al., 2001 ; Madsen and Vestergaard, 2004 ).
• There is no clustering of the onset of symptoms of autism in the period following MMR vaccination (Taylor et al., 1999 ; Mäkelä et al., 2002 ).
• The increase in the reported incidence of autism preceded the use of MMR in the UK (Taylor et al., 1999 ).
• The incidence of autism continued to rise after 1993 in Japan despite withdrawal of MMR (Honda et al., 2005 )
• There is no correlation between the rate of autism and MMR vaccine coverage in either the UK (Kaye et al., 2001 ) or the USA (Dales et al., 2001 )
• There is no difference between the proportion of children with a regressive form of autism (i.e. who appear to develop normally but then lose speech and social skills between around 15 and 30 months) who develop autism having had MMR compared with those who develop autism without vaccination (Fombonne and Chakrabarti, 2001 ; Taylor et al., 2002 ).
• There is no difference between the proportion of children developing autism having had MMR who have associated bowel symptoms compared with those who develop autism without vaccination (Fombonne and Chakrabarti, 2001 ; Taylor et al., 2002 )
• No vaccine virus can be detected in children with autism using the most sensitive methods available (Afzal et al., 2006 ; D’Souza et al., 2006 ).

The MMR vaccine is given later than some of the other vaccines in the UK schedule because it works better then. In the short film below, Professor Octavio Ramilo explains why this is. In other countries the vaccine may be given at 9 months. The MMR vaccine can safely be given to babies younger than this, especially if there is a measles outbreak.