Fake News Alert: US FDA Says Vaccines Cause Autism

Anti-vaccine advocates in the international circle recently claimed that the United States Food and Drug Administration issued a statement that vaccines are causing autism. In particular, they are claiming that a childhood vaccine for Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis (DTaP) has listed autism as among its adverse effects in the product’s medical label.

According to a New York Times report, the FDA has not made such statement and it stands by its belief that vaccines do not cause autism.

Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism

According to fact-checking website Snopes, the basis for this fake claim is a 2005 product label insert for Tripedia, Sanofi Pasteur’s combined vaccine. The product insert included Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and autism in its list of adverse effects.

Anti-vaccine groups touted this as confirmation of their claim all along. However, the product insert also states that the list of adverse effects came from voluntary reports of post-drug use “from a population of uncertain size,”  therefore “it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequency or establish a causal relationship to drug exposure.”

Since then, the FDA has changed their labeling rules. It now only includes adverse effects ts “for which there is some basis to believe there is a causal relationship.”

Tripedia on the other hand has stopped making the vaccine several years ago, with its last shipment reported in 2012.

Long-Debunked Claims

The claim that vaccines have been causing autism in children has long been debunked. A 1998 study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield claimed that 12 children developed chronic intestinal disorders followed by severe mental regressions. This study was however debunked as Dr. Wakefield was discovered to have been paid by lawyers of parents seeking legal action against the vaccine makers. He was also holding a patent for another measles vaccine posed to replace the combined vaccine.

Results of Dr. Wakefield’s study were published in The Lancet, a British medical journal. The journal only issued a retraction of the study in Feb. 2010.