Autism was first clinically described in 1920. The MMR vaccine wasn’t approved until 1971. Hence the “vaccines cause autism” argument is mathematically false.
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An easily debunked lie
Vaccines do not cause autism. Autism predates MMR vaccines; therefore, any further argument is a moot point. By the way for those who don’t know MMR stands for Measles, Mumps, and Rubella, which are three highly contagious viral diseases that the vaccine protects against in a single shot. It’s a combination vaccine made with live, weakened viruses that train the immune system to recognize and fight off these illnesses without causing a full-blown infection.
Of course, people who claim stupid things such as demonizing MMR vaccines tend to also be bad at math. So, in this article I’ll spell out some chronology. Yes, some vaccines predate the first mention of autism by less than five years, but we also have to remember that our understanding on how to develop vaccines has also improved exponentially since then. #science
Let’s start with a timeline with the very first vaccine. In 1796 Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine for Smallpox - using cowpox. Then in 1881 Louis Pasteur developed the first vaccine in a lab for Anthrax. In 1885 Pasteur and Roux had the first post-exposure vaccine breakthrough for Rabies. In the 1890's various scientists developed serum-based and bacterial vaccines started to emerge to combat Tetanus, and Typhoid. In 1914 the pertussis vaccine was developed for preventing the whooping cough – a highly contagious respiratory disease - which was essentially eradicated until 2024-2025 when gullible folks normalized delaying or stop vaccinating their kids. And yes, this condition can be fatal, especially in children. Why would anybody not want to prevent their child to die from such a debilitating disease? Well, I’ve actually met a few who chose exposing that risk to their offspring when they are at their most vulnerable - at the whims of misinformed parents. And since 1921 The tuberculosis vaccine still used today was developed by Calmette & Guerin.
So yes, we've been vaccinating people longer than the USA has been an independent nation. How many of them resulted in autism? The math is not in favor of the antivaxxers.
Before Autism was clinically defined, the condition did exist but was often misdiagnosed as a bunch of other – often wild - misconception rather than the actual condition. For example, autism was also characterized as witchcraft, or demonic possessions. I’ll break it down in a little bit for you to see how much autistic people had to suffer because people did not understand the spectrum. And of course, a lot of people still don’t understand it – and it is worth mentioning that no two autistic people are the same.
If you forget everything I said on this article, remember this:
We don’t have more autistic people nowadays than before, we are just better at diagnosing it accurately. It’s that simple.
Understanding the Timeline
Autism has been misunderstood from the start. People who don’t fall under the “standard” neurotypical model for a society were often targets of unscrupulous “caretakers.” Sadly, in 2025 we still have charlatans with suits and ties who have no clue about how destructive and regressive their misunderstandings on autism really become – not just now, but as time moves forward. Often the damage won’t manifest in full until it’s too late. This is spectacularly negative when these morons are in positions of authority and people take their lack of understanding as though they were irrefutable facts.
This is not new, but we should be past this point by now. Let’s understand how autism has been viewed in years past.
- Middle Ages & Early Modern Period:
Behaviors we now associate with autism — social withdrawal, repetitive actions, lack of eye contact, or unusual speech — were often interpreted as signs of demonic possession, witchcraft, or moral failing. People were subjected to exorcisms, isolation, or worse. There was no framework for neurodivergence — only fear and superstition. And spoiler alert, some idiots still consider autism a supernatural possession. Yes, they are that stupid even in 2025.
- Early 20th Century:
Before Leo Kanner’s 1943 paper formally described autism, many children were misdiagnosed with childhood schizophrenia, mental retardation, or psychosis. The psychiatric field lacked the tools to distinguish developmental disorders from psychiatric ones. And yes, to this day some people get misdiagnosed, or never diagnosed depending on where in the autism spectrum a person might be operating at. Many autistic folks have no idea they are indeed autistic. We’ll talk about masking later on.
- Refrigerator Mother Theory (1940s–1960s):
Autism was falsely blamed on emotionally distant parenting, especially by mothers. This theory — popularized by Bruno Bettelheim caused immense harm and shame, and delayed meaningful understanding of autism as a neurodevelopmental condition. And we are getting back to that point in history when people are attributing autism to causes that had nothing to do with reality. We are either born autistic or not. I know, because I am autistic. We don’t know what “causes” it – but that does not mean we have to confuse correlation with causation.
- DSM-III Era (1980s):
Autism was narrowly defined and still often confused with other disorders. Only in the 1990s and 2010s did the spectrum model emerge, allowing for more accurate and inclusive diagnoses. And yes, it has continued to evolve in the sense that we are getting better at diagnosing it. For example my daughter was diagnosed – albeit late – as a kid. I did not realize I was autistic until my 40s.
As you can see misconceptions have been going on for a lot longer than most vaccines have existed. The idiot that came up with that debunked hypothesis claiming that vaccines cause autism was Andrew Wakefield, a former British physician who published a deeply flawed and now-retracted paper in The Lancet in 1998, suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
His “study” involved only 12 children, lacked scientific rigor, and was later revealed to be riddled with ethical violations and undisclosed financial conflicts of interest. Wakefield lost his medical license, but the damage was done because his fraudulent claims were amplified by media, celebrities, and anti-vaccine activists, fueling a global wave of vaccine hesitancy that persists to this day despite overwhelming scientific evidence disproving any connection.
And somehow now in 2025 we have a literal brain-eaten-by-worm idiot repeating these debunked claims. And what is worst, it resonates with gullible parents around the world, not just in the USA. I’ve seen especially Hispanics worldwide being at high risk of believing these misconceptions. I’ll write about that in the future.
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Don’t increase your kids suffering
Ok, parents – understand – if you have an autistic child, their communication skills are often more challenging than a neurotypical child. That means that it might be a lot harder for a neurodivergent child to articulate their needs and wants even when they are disease-free. If they get sick it is specially challenging when they are under some sort of duress, pain, discomfort, or suffering caused by any disease. Some diseases are worse than others. Being sick sucks even as a neurotypical person who has no problem communicating. Inflicting additional suffering to a neurodivergent person is unforgivable – in my view criminal.
Can some vaccines have negative reactions on some people? Yes. Just like some food can result in bad reactions on some individuals. But that is why vaccinations around the world are highly controlled endeavors. We literally benefit from centuries of trial and error to make our vaccines better and safer each time. And that is why we were able to eradicate many diseases that are now returning – because some naïve parents think they are doing their children a disservice by vaccinating them. I’ve spoken with tons of antivaxxers and none of them understand the process, nor are they qualified to hold a candle to those who work in those immunological fields.
Is big pharma an area of concern? Sure, yes – any powerful entity will have some explaining to do on several areas. But the fact is that it is not profitable for big pharma to push a product that is disabling their patients. Think about it for a second. If everybody who gets vaccinated dies or becomes unable to perform optimally, then how they hell are they able to make money off the entire population who is either dead or unable to contribute? Not to mention that big pharma executives are vaccine users themselves. It should go without saying, but there are tons of safeguards to ensure anything that goes into our body is safe. If not, the lawsuits alone would make that business model unsustainable very quickly. This is not hard to understand.
But the fact is that about 85% of the world gets vaccinated, but it takes only 15% of unvaccinated folks for a pathogen to lurk in the shadows. And yes, the number of antivaxxers has grown because of political and religious “advice” – which is by the way causing a lot of preventable diseases to come back. Do you know who benefits from that? Adversarial regimes, who by the way have mandatory vaccination programs, and who want a Western immunocompromised population in the next few years – so they can take over, because we’ll become a weakened and softer target.
Where do you think the antivax propaganda comes from? Adversarial regimes, duh! And it is repeated by willful morons in friendly lands… ironically making the adversaries better able to steal those very lands from them in the near future because they will be too immunocompromised to resist. Talk about destroying a civilization from the inside out – by willful participation on their own demise despite the solution existing and being freely available. In fact, in the USA where the cost of healthcare is astronomical, vaccines are often offered free of charge. Why is that? Because sick people are not productive, that is why!
Have you ever been forced to work when you had a bad cold? It sucks, huh? Well, a lot of the diseases that MMR vaccines prevent are a lot worse. It is not about the lethality; it is about how it disrupts the environment when people get sick. For example, COVID did not kill every patient, but it surely disrupted all those who contracted it, and because it is highly contagious the disruption grew exponentially. In other words, preventing a disease should not only be based on whether it will kill you or not. Being healthy should be the default position.
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Don’t be afraid of autism
I will be writing more about this, and other wedge issues. The problem is that most people just recycle the same arguments, and they end up talking in circles. I want to provide you an additional layer that is often missed. In this case vaccination makes it easier for the parents and the kids when they are not subjected to the risk of contracting a preventable disease. Much like a compound fracture, it might not be fatal (depending where that bone is sticking out), but it also sucks. So, why would you increase the risk to your kid to experience such pain? Makes no sense to me.
Parents, autism is not a disease, and being autistic does not mean that the person is not able to have a fulfilling and successful life. It only means we autistic people see the world from a different perspective, and once you are able to align your focus through our eyes (you have to earn that privilege in your kid’s life), you will find out that an entire world opens up. And yes, each autistic person is unique. I will be writing more about autism in future articles. But from an autistic parent with an autistic daughter – listen up, our lives are very happy, we just have found our own path that makes sense to us.
If your child is diagnosed with autism is not because of a vaccine. I established that autism predates the vaccinations. Don’t worry so much about the cause, and rather focus on the support your loved one needs. As promised, I will talk about Masking, because many autistic folks don’t even realize they are indeed autistic – I didn’t - took me more than 40 years to realize it.
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Understanding Masking
You have no idea how many times I’ve been told – “you don’t look autistic.” Which begs the question, what the hell does an autistic person is supposed to look like then? I know they don’t mean it with bad intention, but remember no two autistic people are the same. We all have different levels of strengths and challenges – much like neurotypical folks, except that ours might seem a bit more noticeable under certain circumstances. And we might sometimes feel awkward or odd as we compare ourselves with our peer group. I know I did feel that way while growing up – but I didn’t know it was autism.
Masking means we are able to blend in – the best we can – into a neurotypical environment. And yes, that can be very taxing. It is almost like “playing pretend” but with some additional quirks. For example, let’s say that you hate sports, but your friends love sports. You want to be with your friends, so you tolerate sports as much as you can so you can be part of the group. Does that mean the sports make you happy, not at all… what makes you happy is the company of those you love, even if you’re going out of your way to share an activity that is not your cup of tea.
I know I had experienced that before. And yes, masking does sometimes get normalized because it becomes a habit. A lot of the times when your neurodivergent loved one is “acting normal” – they are adjusting to the neurotypical world. At some point we might drop our guard, some of us when we have total privacy to avoid making others uncomfortable with our quirks. But the most important thing a parent can do is accept their children for who they are without the mask. Do not confuse this with enabling bad or destructive behaviors. I’ll expand on that in a different article.
For now I want you to remember that being autistic can actually be great if we are given a chance to roam in our personal world. My daughter is a very happy child, she loves her artwork, her music, she has her own little quirks we all celebrate. And of course she enjoys her me-time where she and her mind can be able to flourish and bask in their own world. But when she comes out, she knows she is accepted and we are ready to spend quality time together. As a parent of an autistic child let me tell you this, you might be also their best friend, sometimes their only friend. Especially nowadays that social interactions are challenging even among “fully functional” adults.
I was very lucky when I was a child because I had friends who [mostly] understood me and accepted me for who I was – even though we did not know about autism back then… at least not in my own school. And as I got older my group of friends grew, but it is because I learned to mask and adapt with more diverse groups of people – I just didn’t know I was doing so. The epiphany of all that – as I said – came a few decades later.
And yes, I usually prefer being on my own whenever I can. Alone is not always lonely.
Parents, you are responsible for your child’s well-being. If you don’t know about vaccines, do your research. You can even chat with your AI bot for hours and they will tell you a lot of resources and help you dispel all the myths. If you only listen to charlatans, remember you’re putting the credibility of a moron above the well-being of your child. Even if you are well-intentioned, the true testament of love for your child is doing the proper research, not only parroting talking points of media figures you seem to like. Remember swindlers tend to be well-dressed and eloquent. For the sake of our kids, don’t fall into that trap. HLC
About the Author: J. Marcelo "BeeZee" Baqueroalvarez
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J. Marcelo "BeeZee" Baqueroalvarez is the Founder of Half Life Crisis™, a unique father-daughter collaboration dedicated to the relentless pursuit of intellectual honesty, critical thinking, geopolitical strategy, and meaningful art. Marcelo is the recognized author of the essential reads, Authoritarianism & Propaganda and Woke & Proud, driving challenging conversations worldwide. When not publishing, Marcelo utilizes his strategic insight in technology and business as the founder of BeeZee Vision, LLC™, which includes BZVweb™ Automated Web Services and Info in Context™ strategic consulting.
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