In the UK, uptake of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) triple vaccine is now at a 10-year low, with just 85.5 percent of 5-year-olds receiving their two jabs, according to data recently released by the UK Health Security Agency. Newspapers like The Guardian claim that one in 10 children will now be unprotected from measles.
“THESE RESULTS BELIE THE BOOTS-ON-THE-GROUND EXPERIENCE OF MANY PARENTS WHO HAVE WITNESSED A SUDDEN AND CATASTROPHIC DECLINE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR CHILD IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING AN MMR VACCINATION”
And even before Covid lit up the dashboard, measles outbreaks in the US were frequently in the news, along with much handwringing from health officials about “vaccine hesitancy”and the growing aversion for childhood vaccines at the root of the problem.
But the one issue at the heart of parents’ hesitancy that won’t go away is the question of whether the MMR triple shot causes autism. Behind this is the commonsense question of why autism rates have gone from one in 2,000 to one in 45 or less in less than 40 years.
The latest studies by various governmental health agencies around the world vehemently dispute any association between autism and the MMR vaccine.
Just before the Covid pandemic, a nationwide cohort study of 657,461 children born in Denmark between 1999 and 2010 by the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen was published, which used Danish population registries to link information on MMR vaccination and autism diagnoses among the 6,517 children in the cohort.
The researchers’ overall conclusion: “The chances of developing autism
