Is there a connection between vaccines and autism?

Licensed psychologist and autism specialist Ronald Leaf, PhD, discusses whether or not there is a connection between vaccines and autism.

Transcript

00:00

The connection between vaccines and autism is what we call a correlation. It's based upon time. [ELECTRONIC MUSIC]

00:16

When do children receive the vaccine? When does autism become apparent? Around the same time.

00:22

So unfortunately, we've attributed vaccines to autism because they're closely related in time.

00:29

There's also a study that came out of the UK years ago that made that attribution that vaccines

00:35

were a cause of autism, and really the preservative in the vaccine, thimerosal, as being the cause. What's the scientific evidence?

00:43

Well, there's absolutely not a shred of scientific evidence that the preservative causes autism-- not a shred. There's been over 1,000 studies that have looked at this,

00:52

and not one has shown there's a link between the two. But tragically, children aren't receiving vaccines.

00:59

And tragically, it's resulted in children receiving mumps, measles, and rubella. It's caused death because of this correlation

01:07

and because of this one fraudulent study. We've got to do better than this. We've got to be critical thinkers.

01:13

We've got to look at what the causes of autism are but not bringing anything because of correlations,

01:20

because of associations. We need to look at scientific evidence. That, the preservative, there is no scientific evidence

01:28

whatsoever. [AUDIO LOGO]