I remember when I was a kid, how important science was in education, and we understood that the scientific method helped us to understand and explain phenomena. If it was backed up by enough evidence, it became a scientific law, such as the law of gravity, though even scientific laws can be “broken.”
People are understandably upset about autism, especially since no one is able to figure out what causes it. So we look for patterns and try to piece it together. This is an anecdotal article about Amish people that claims that only three Amish children were ever vaccinated, and of those, two of them developed autism. I understand the strong desire to explain things, and when things are unexplained, then people want to develop conspiracy theories, but the truth of the matter is without any actual documented data to back it up, you can’t make any conclusions about the Amish as a people and their apparent (at least in this article) lack of autism.
I am posting about this because I am passionate about science and understanding why things work, and every form of research I’ve read indicates there is no connection between vaccinations and autism. I know that there is a similar thought about going gluten-free to reduce the effects of autism, yet there is no science to back that up, either.
I hope that people don’t stop vaccinating their kids because we have already seen the resurgence of whooping cough as a result of this practice. I would hate to see polio and other diseases come back, out of fear that these vaccines allegedly cause autism.
