Vaccines and Autism

After 13 years of controversy, the British Medical Journal determined scientist Andrew Wakefield's vaccine-autism link constituted an "elaborate fraud". His 1998 research studied 12 children in which he reported finding a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.

Investigations into his research by BMJ recently revealed Wakefield fabricated the link by falsifying all 12 patient histories. This has led to the scientific community wasting it's resources and global consequences of parents declining vaccination for their children. In the past decade, many children contracted diseases such as measles and pertussis (whooping cough). For example, California reported 6,000 cases of pertussis in 2010, the most since 1950.

Of course vaccines are never 100% safe. And people like Jenny McCarthy will fight to the death claiming her son' s autism was a result of his vaccination.