Fact-check: “Vaccines cause autism”
Verdict: False (97% confidence)
The claim is directly contradicted by an overwhelming body of primary-source evidence spanning more than two decades, including a 2025 WHO expert review of 31 studies, a 2019 Danish nationwide cohort of 657,461 children, a 2014 meta-analysis, a 2022 Cochrane review, and repeated National Academies assessments — all finding no causal link between vaccines (including MMR and thimerosal-containing vaccines) and autism. The original 1998 Wakefield paper that launched the hypothesis was fully retrac…
This fact-check was conducted by SpinkillerAI, a non-partisan AI-powered accountability platform.
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