The anti-vaccines movement started with the at-best dubious evidence provided by a man called Andrew Wakefield in 1998. Many researchers have tried to reproduce his findings and failed. Based on the world's scientific structure, his theories has been disproven. Is that really the case? I will try to give a short overview of my thoughts on the topic.

Let's examine the facts

Let's say for the argument's sake that it's a plot and allllll studies ever that have failed have been paid off to fail. All? How come no one has ever been able to reproduce it in 22 years since the study came up?

Furthermore, plenty of studies lead the scientific community to believe that autism develops in the womb and, since it only shows parent-noticeable signs after the age when children get their first vaccinations, there is a tendency to misplace the cause on the vaccines.

The avoidable injury

Now, let's talk about the many, many diseases that are avoided by vaccines. Did you know that there is a minimal likelihood to survive once you've been infected with rabies, for example, and that it's entirely avoidable with vaccination?

Once a rabies infection is established, there's no effective treatment. Though a small number of people have survived rabies, the disease usually causes death. For that reason, if you think you've been exposed to rabies, you must get a series of shots to prevent the infection from taking hold. (source)

Countless other diseases could bring death to a child. Diphtheria had disappeared 30 years ago, for example. It has a death rate of 10% of infected people. A significant percentage of people have stopped vaccinating their children recently and last year it reappeared and claimed its first victim in 30 years.

The relationship between autism and vaccines has not been reproducible at all by any for-or-non-for-profit scientific organization in the whole world. How is it feasible then to endanger not only your children but other people's children to hundreds of preventable diseases with high death rates, only because one (disproven) scientist said that vaccines might cause autism sometimes in 1998?

It's likely a doctor would've spoken out

Let's imagine again, that all of the above is irrelevant. For argument's sake, let's imagine that vaccines do cause terrible consequences and come with loads of autism and other things:

Being a doctor is one of the noblest professions in the whole world. While many outliers are immoral, I think it's fair to say that if there is a measure of morality, the highest density of positive morality would be in hospitals. It would be in the hands of nurses and doctors, whose full dedication is to abide by the Hippocratic Oath, according to which they swear to use their abilities to help the sick and injured and never to cause harm knowingly.

Let's very much exaggerate and say that 80% of doctors are actually immoral and very evil. That hugely inflated number would leave at least 20% of doctors ranging from morally neutral to morally good, who would perceive these terrible consequences and loads of autism caused by vaccines. A small percentage of these doctors would notice this and speak out. But it hasn't happened. Only one doctor has ever spoken out about it, and his method has been found to be faulty and irreproducible.

Let's reexamine our views

Finally, let's return to normalcy and see that:

• Given the irreproducibility of Andrew Wakefield's 1998 experiment results, there is a great likelihood that the relationship between vaccines and autism is either false or greatly exaggerated.
• Let's also see that there are countless fatal and crippling diseases that can be easily avoidable through vaccines.
• Let's observe the social responsibility that each parent has to their children and their neighbour's children's safety.
• Let's see that it's unlikely that anything above a small percentage of doctors are actually immoral and that most doctors, given their profession, would want to speak out if they noticed such a dark relationship between vaccines and harmful consequences.
• Let's also notice that deadly preventable diseases like measles and diphtheria have been on the rise ever since anti-vaxxing became a thing.

Does it still sound reasonable to say that vaccines cause autism, and therefore should be avoided?