Nevertheless...Autism Existed Before Vaccines.

 In the words of one of my favorite professors, Dr. Joan Wertz, “correlation does not equal causation.” In regard to this series, that means—and I will scream this from the rooftops if you want me to—vaccines do not cause autism. I get it, really. As someone who is constantly looking for answers to…well, anything, really, I understand. I want to know why people do the things they do, I want to know why we act the way we do, and what causes everything. I’m never going to be able to know all those things, though. But, looking at the timeline, I can tell you that autism was around long before vaccines. We just didn’t feel the need to label it as such.

Autism and it’s sister disorder, ADHD, have been around since as long as there have been people. The thing is, the world didn’t used to be as inaccessible for people with levels 1 or 2 autism (verbal or nonverbal but able to perform basic functions, they might struggle with expression, emotional regulation, and recognizing feelings and social cues in others) or ADHD. In some ways, the world before technology and offices and grocery stores could have been built for people who were able to hyperfocus or not focus at all. People who were more inclined to move and build, hunt and gather, than people who are wired to sit and listen or paper punch all day. Imagine the most obedient person from your office waiting for someone to tell him what to do in a mammoth attack. He would have an issue… a lot of them. 

I’m not going to tell you the theories that abound of what causes autism, because, well, we don’t have time. What I will tell you is that prior to the 1800’s people who have autism were called changelings. You know, the children that were carried off by fairies and switched so their parents went from having very well behaved, typical child to one who was just a little bit different. In the 1800’s there was still no official diagnosis of autism, the word wasn’t even used yet, but we went from calling people changelings and thinking they had been carried off by fairies, to acknowledging that these were the same people, they just were different, with ‘awkward social abilities.’ In the 1940’s two scientists (and I use that word loosely, at least in one case) documented children with what they referred to as autistic traits. Leo Kanner included boys and girls in his studies, while the other, Hans Asperger, only included boys. He specifically pointed to unusual interests and high intelligence in his studies, while Kanner pointed out emotional dysregulation and extreme social awkwardness, both using the word autistic. An official diagnosis of autism was not recognized until the 1980’s in the DSM III, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 

The first real vaccine was created in 1885 and vaccines were required for smallpox shortly thereafter. However, the Measles, Mumps, Rubella vaccine, the one people blame for autism, a mental “disorder” (I hate that term for kids with level 1 or high functioning autism, but that’s for a different entry)—that has been around for literal centuries, was not licensed or required until 1973. It’s interesting to note that in 1980 the world was declared free of naturally occurring smallpox due to vaccines. Thanks to vaccines, we stopped having to worry about deadly viruses. And then people, as is our nature, started wondering what caused the things that made people different. And they blamed vaccines. MMR vaccines do not cause autism, by the way. This has been debunked several times over. It’s just an unfortunate coincidence that it is received when the first signs of autism tend to appear in children. 

All that to say two things:

1. Vaccines do not cause autism. The genes for autism are already there and have been since before your grandfather was born. 
2. Who cares if they do cause autism? I would rather have autism, but more importantly, I would rather have my happy, healthy child who has autism than a dead kid. 

Because there is no official diagnosis before 1980 of autism, that means we don’t know for sure if someone from history could have had it. We can only look at the records left behind and go from there, and a lot of very famous, influential people have probably had autism. Except this blog is already far too long to include a biography like it was originally supposed to. So, later this week I’ll be back because one of the sons of our most famous president would like to have a chat. 

Sources: 

Works Cited

Hviid, Anders, et al. “Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism.” Annals of Internal Medicine, vol. 170, no. 8, 5 Mar. 2019, pp. 513–520, www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M18-2101, https://doi.org/10.7326/m18-2101.

Immunize.org. “Vaccine History Timeline.” Immunize.org, 17 Jan. 2024, www.immunize.org/vaccines/vaccine-timeline/.

Najera, Rene. “Timeline of Vaccination Mandates.” Cpp-Hov.netlify.app, 9 Aug. 2021, historyofvaccines.org/blog/timeline-of-vaccination-mandates.

Rosen, Nicole E., et al. “The Diagnosis of Autism: From Kanner to DSM-III to DSM-5 and Beyond.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 51, no. 12, 24 Feb. 2021, pp. 4253–4270, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04904-1.