Why Some People Still Believe Vaccines Cause Autism.
Was there even a shred of scientific truth to this belief?
As a Malaysian, I’m surprised that Malaysia is one of the top countries whose people believe vaccines cause autism (Figure 1). Perhaps we are just not as vocal in voicing this issue, giving the illusion that vaccine hesitancy isn’t prevalent here.
The Ipsos Mori Perils of Perception Survey conducted 29,133 interviews across 38 countries in 2017. They revealed that 8–44% of people believed vaccines caused autism in children, 23–63% were unsure, and only 20–62% did not believe it. If you average them, nearly 6 in 10 people worldwide were unsure or believed that vaccines cause autism (Figure 1).
No wonder the World Health Organization (WHO) named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to public health in 2019.
Why do people still believe that vaccines cause autism? As a science graduate, I was under the impression that this belief has been widely debunked. But I didn’t read into the details, and perhaps there might be a reason for this belief to sustain to this day.
