Bipartisan anti-science from Congress

Vaccines save lives and DO NOT cause Autism. Science has proven this, but we still had to have hearings on it. [Link]

Let me be clear right off the bat: Vaccines don’t cause autism.

It’s really that simple. We know they don’t. There have been extensive studies comparing groups of children who have been vaccinated with, say, the measles, mumps, and rublella (MMR) vaccine versus those who have not, and it’s very clear that there is no elevated rate of autism in the vaccinated children.

This simple truth is denied vigorously and vociferously by antivaxxers (those who oppose, usually rabidly, the use of vaccinations that prevent diseases), but they may as well deny the Earth is round and the sky is blue. It’s rock solid fact. They try to blame mercury in vaccines, but we knowthat mercury has nothing to do with autism; whenthimerosal (a mercury compound) was removed from  vaccines there was absolutely no change in the increase in autism rates.

I could go on and on. Virtually every claim made by antivaxxers is wrong. And this is a critically important issue; vaccines have literally saved hundreds of millions of lives. They save infants from potentially fatal but preventable diseases like pertussis and the flu.

So why did Congress hold hearings this week promoting crackpot antivax views?