The Texas Medical Association stressed today that vaccines do not cause autism, and says its physician members are getting tired of having to continue to stress that to patients, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The TMA says more than 25 scientific studies conducted over decades show no connection between the MMR vaccine, which is common administered to young children, and autism or any other condition.
“There is no connection that we can find between vaccines and autism,” said Jennifer Shuford, MD, infectious disease medical officer for the Texas Department of State Health Services. “There’s been a lot of research that has looked at this question, because we want to make sure that something we are recommending for an entire population is not causing devastating health consequences.”
Dr. Shuford says vaccines are safe and effective, and the only claim that they are not comes from a thoroughly discredited British paper written more than twenty years ago. The doctor who did the research has been prohibited from practicing medicine, and the paper that published it has repeatedly labeled the story as an 'elaborate fraud.'
Texas is one of 16 states that allows exemptions from mandatory vaccinations for 'philosophical and not just medical reasons.' Exemptions from the state's 'no shots, no school' law have risen in Texas by 2,000 percent since 2003, leaving to isolated outbreaks of measles and concerns about more serious epidemics.
A report by the Texas Department of State Health Services says 69 Texas accredited private K-12 schools have exemption rates in double digits. Those areas with higher exemption rates are more vulnerable to outbreak. “When about 95% of a population is covered by the vaccine, we won’t see ongoing transmission of measles in that community - it might spread to one other person, but then it’ll stop,” said Dr. Shuford. “That’s what we hope for when we look at vaccine campaigns for whole populations.”
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