Mailbag: Debunking Vaccines Myths

A few weeks ago we conducted a survey of Our Take readers that included both listeners to our podcast and those who don’t (the latter group, we assume, was interested enough to complete a survey). We asked for questions you would like John to answer, and we got some great ones, including today’s question about vaccines and the long-debunked link between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorder. In this first mailbag episode, John reviews the evidence, calls out the "revised" CDC website, and provides his thoughts on the cost of misinformation and disinformation — and what to do about it.

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References:

Gallup polling on trust: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx

2002 NEJM study: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134

2014 Vaccine study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264410X14006367

2015 JAMA study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2275444

2019 Annals study: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M18-2101

1998 Wakefield Lancet study (retracted). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(97)11096-0/fulltext

CDC webpage on the history of measles: https://cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html

CDC’s interactive page on measles cases and outbreaks: https://cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html

CDC webpage on Autism and Vaccines: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/autism.html#toc

Original CDC page on vaccines and autism, before the rewrite: https://www.restoredcdc.org/www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/autism.html

Internet Wayback Machine instructions: Go to https://web.archive.org and search cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/autism.html, then pick a date before November 19, 2025.

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