Parents desperately don’t want their kid’s autism to be “their fault” or “random chance.” They want someone or something to blame. If it weren’t vaccines, it would be something else.
It’s just like the flat Earth society. They think they have uncovered some hidden conspiracy that no one else knows about and they are smarter than every egghead “elitist” scientist who works on the issue every day of their lives.
It’s basically narcissism meets such low intelligence that it feeds back in the narcissism.
Probably because the only other theorized explanation is genetics and parents and family of autistics can not handle the thought of being “that “weird themselves
When this fully debunked theory became politicized, it was a done deal. Very cynical and targeted propaganda. Effective when you think you’ve been failed by the government and/or the Western medical model.
Back when it was just Jenny McCartney and the genetics of Autism weren’t entirely known: parents needed some type of reason on why their bubbly kid disappeared at 2. Her claiming vaccines filled in that feeling of “did I cause this” with “no, science did” and absolved parents from the guilt society was pushing at the time towards parents. I don’t know if that pressure is as prevalent now, but back in the 90s it was common for religions to say if there’s something wrong with the child it’s because the parents sinned in some way. A lot of those religions were at their peak in the 90s.
So being able to point at something that says “my child was born perfect” means the parents didn’t cause it through sinning, and then “vaccines did it” meant the parents didn’t cause it by being bad parents—the government did.
Because people don’t like the idea that autism is something that just happens. People do not like living in a world where unfortunate things happen randomly without explanation. It’s a scary idea. So they come up with conspiracies to make themselves feel better.
And then opportunistic pundits and politicians take advantage of this fear for their own purposes.
So they don’t have to vaccinate themselves or their children. Also, to “prove” modern vaccines cause problems that “didn’t exist” any time before 2000.
Here’s a video of a scientist delving into, among other things, the psychology of why people cling to pseudoscience despite overwhelming evidence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4dhaPbPOps
Because they are searching for a reason why exists. People want answers. They want to know why autism is effecting people. In reality…there really aren’t any. It just does. Maybe with some genetic probability in there. Life sucks. Sometimes things just happen.
Unfortunately a long time ago a man who’s medical license was revoked for doing little to no research in his studies released a paper saying that vaccines caused autism. And ever since, people have run with it despite the fact the original author was barred from clinical studies for essentially being a fraud.
I have read that belief in conspiracy theories is, in part, fueled by the positive effect possession of ‘secret knowledge’ has on the conspirators’ egos. For those whose rejection of vaccines have had dire consequences, for themselves or others, the ego effect is doubly important, because if they’re wrong and could’ve prevented said consequences, it would be a serious (possibly irrecoverable) blow to said egos.
Honest answer – Most of those people don’t think the issue has been adequately studied. And now – because the autism umbrella has been expanded to cover so many more people – the truth will probably take even longer to figure out.
Its important to understand that when this idea first started – the 1980s to my knowledge – even most people who suspected vaccines did not think that ALL vaccines caused ALL autism. But parents of some of the autistic kids noticed that their previously normal kids started regressing in the weeks and months after a round of routine vaccinations. ( yes – thats how it happens with some kids. I know that NOW, in 2025, its taboo to say that. In 2025 the idea is that ALL kids on the spectrum are just born that way.) The parents wanted this to be studied and no one wanted to do it because of liability ( $$$ ) issues. Then a “researcher” came along with a bogus research paper and tainted everything forever.
Its also important to understand that – at that time – autism was blamed on mothers – saying they were at fault for not bonding adequately to their young children – that they were “cold” and that autism was their result. Large swaths of the mainstream medical community actually promoted that cruel nonsense. So you can see how a loving parent – who KNEW they didn’t do anything wrong – would be trying to figure out the mystery of what caused their child who previously smiled and said simple words to stop doing those things.
People love to ridicule parents who blame vaccines. But no one ever wants to ridicule the doctors who used to blame autism on the mothers “not bonding” with their children. Its beyond hypocritical IMHO.
People don’t like not knowing why something is how it is. You give them a thing to blame, likely something they don’t truly understand (like the science behind vaccines) and say, “This is why.” and they’ll cling to it.
Because people who have never been taught critical thinking skills can’t conceive of bad things happening without there being someone/thing to blame. It’s the same bad programming that makes people susceptible to conspiracy theories, and it’s getting worse and worse the longer we let it go on.
My guess: because it makes them feel smart, when they are anything but. It makes them feel like “they were wise to it aaaaaaaaall along…..”. So fucking dumb.
Btw, u got the COVID vaccine and all the boosters. Wasn’t my dick supposed to fly off my body by now or something?
Because it’s an explanation as to why their kids are who they are.
My wife’s son is autistic. Not even a “little”….she fucking HATES this quirky “omg I’m so autistic” phase people are doing because it detracts from real autistic kids.
I’m gonna be an asshole here…
Liking something doesn’t mean you’re fucking autistic.
Finding something intriguing doesn’t either.
You’re not fucking autistic, you’re w dumb bitch with a hobby who wants attention.
Watch a kid throw a huge fit bc things don’t like up right. Watch them scream because colors don’t match. Watch as a child has a literal fucking meltdown because the shades of the sky don’t match.
Fuck all you fake ass autistc kids who blast shit online for views. You ruin the actual chance an autistic child gets help because “omg I like trains a lot”
Most of you aren’t autistic. You just want the fucking attention that comes with. Watch a child have a full meltdown over colors and then come to me with your “omg like..
The color pink makes me feel weird” bullshit.
People like this are just losers who have done nothing with their lives, or they don’t want to admit they’re stupid, so they believe these conspiracies to make themselves feel like they’re smarter than everyone else.
I have autism, and I want to know what’s causing the spike in autism cases (I’m aware it’s not vaccines) rather than just treating symptoms, because I wouldn’t recommend having it. It’s not “look at me, I’m so quirky”—it genuinely sucks sometimes to struggle with the smallest things.
In addition to the other great explanations above I want to add that Autism is genetic so if your kid is autistic then it’s highly likely you are too.
But a lot of people with ASD level 1 had it beaten out of them at an early age and internalized and denied it. Accepting that its genetic means accepting they are autistic too and that their parents abused them.
A friend of mine is autistic and so is her mom, but her mom is deep in denial and takes it out on her daughter.
People worship nature like a god and think doctors and therapists cure things instead of making them comfortable to live with. It’s the same as saying trans people should go to therapy, when literally every trans person had to already. They want things to just… go back to “normal” on a prayer or hard work. They believe in universal desserts: the idea that the universe gives people what they deserve and is never arbitrary or unfair.
Because some people think their babies were normal until they got their first vaccines. Since the series of vaccines happens throughout the first two years of life, there’s a pretty high chance that the kid will have had a vaccine close to whenever the parents notice that something is different about their child.
My sister is autistic and she was different basically from birth. She was the 3rd child and so her differences were very obvious to my parents from the beginning. My cousin with autism is the third of 4 children and it was the same story with him. But I can see how people with fewer children to compare to might not notice anything until their child gets to an age where the symptoms become more pronounced.
Not that long ago the reason given for autism was ‘refrigerator mothers’. (Basically saying you didn’t love your kid enough during gestation so now they have autism). So when someone came up with another reason/excuse parents kind of jumped on it
Because they want it to be preventable and haven’t really seen a world pre-vaccine. And they listen to a long debunked paper written by a man trying to discredit the mmr vaccine to promote his own.
I think because if it was that would make it a lot easier to prevent. Autism is a really serious lifelong disability that has a huge impact on one’s life even in the most mild forms. It would be wonderful if it was as simple as not vaccinating
Control and denial. “COVID only kills old and/or obese people.” “Cancer only happens to people who make bad choices.” “Autism is preventable; just avoid the shots.”
People fear death, disability, illness, suffering, discomfort, and even inconvenience. They’ll come up with rituals, religions, superstitions, health and fitness regimes, etc, to ward off the evils of life.
Having something you can blame and avoid makes people feel better. “That won’t happen to me/my loved one, because xyz.”
I dont know that its not vaccines that cause it, in basic training i was given several injections, i lost all my strength and now have a bunch of problems, before i was lifting 200 lbs in the gym and now i can barely lift 5 and i have immense fatigue, im diagnosed with fibromyalgia which means we dont know wtf is wrong with you
I obviously had an allergic reaction but millions of other recruits had no problem with the vaccines, it would be almost impossible to prove that it was the vaccines thats the only thing i can think of
Perhaps vaccines cause autism in the child directly or perhaps it lingers in the parent and changes something in them, idk, anything is possible, its also possible its not vaccines but all the chemicals in our water and meals
As far as wanting to believe its vaccines causing autism prob cause they feel guilty, they were selfish and wanted a child and now that child has problems
Everything is about distrusting, shitting on or tearing down establishments.
Reddit is extremely prone to it too.
Mix a distrust of the medical establishment, to an “unsolved” trend of increasing autism.
I mean, even we have to admit “we are just better at recognizing it” sounds like cope. It’s nearly unverifiable making it surprisingly unscientific for a science based establishment.
There is some evidence though, in the form of the number of patients who had regularly been seeing psychiatrists or psychologists for a long time and are only diagnosed recently. This strongly supports the
Then of course there is the the simple fact when you have a kid with autism, it’s easier to feel angry at someone, rather than something beyond your control, or even worse your higher power if they have one. Blaming your god brings all kinds of thoughts like, what did I do wrong, why would god be doing this to me, am I being tested?
Probably have their whole world view pegged and then expanded from this bullshit lie that keeps popping up due to rich influencers who have zero medical training or knowledge.
Kind of like basing any and all vehicle repairs for your vehicle based on the ramblings of a lunatic you pass at the traffic lights. “Well he sees lots of cars so he must know something about them…?”
I think that people can look at the UFO-believers that were around a couple of decades ago. Their faith in the visits was also very strong and partially hung up on ego and personal conviction.
There are elements of religion in it where people need to believe, they see belief in their surroundings and then they make a personal kosmology, an idea of how the world works.
The “autism-thing” will likely be replaced by some other lie when the people and reasons behind it dies out.
People want simple solutions to complex problems. The root of a lot of chaos and drifters unfortunately comes down to people preying on that human desire.
Anytime someone says this I respond with “actually it’s probably the micro plastics and tire particulates.”
I don’t care if it’s also not true, but if they become as fanatical about plastics as they are about vaccines, maybe we could save the whales or something.
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
I know a family that has two kids, both sons, both with ASD. The older one’s
Is more severe. Although the mother will now state that Vaccines don’t cause it, she has mentioned that her older child was diagnosed before the second one was born, so “I need to ask for the Vaccines that didn’t have mercury in them.”
That makes it sound to me as if she DOES believe Vaccines had a role in it.
Her husband is in denial. He thinks he’s a big, macho man, and he was the big man on campus in his little tiny rural town. He can’t go strutting around town having kids, especially sons , diagnosed with Autism. He thinks he’s God’s gift to his state, and, naturally, could only produce son’s as perfect and macho as he is. He’s an asshat
Honestly, having it be genetic is just a good of a “reason” or a thing to blame as any other rationalization. Bunch of people in here projecting some kind of blame on people for their genetic makeup which they can’t change – DISGUSTING.
Because they are conservatives and so very much invested in ideas about good and bad people being that way by birth; thus if genetics cause autism by their own convictions they are bad, which is intolerable.
A lot of it is about denial. Another part is trying to find a simple and easy to grasp cause. (And then probably another part is some conspiracy nonsense or whatever, but that feels connected to both other factors)
As someone with an autoimmune disease, diagnosed later in life, it’s an interesting experience. It seems like a similar experience to how people react to an autism diagnosis or other conditions.
Immediately people around me were looking for reasons as to why it happened. They wanted something to blame for my condition. Because, to them, random chance just didn’t make sense or wasn’t a satisfying answer. So they needed to look elsewhere, to blame something else, anything else.
All kinds of crazy theories were thrown at me. From dietary choices to birth control, and everything in between.
Whether directly, or indirectly, a lot of people pointed at things that would imply that my condition was, in some way, my OWN fault.
Why? Because it was a sense of comfort to them. Because, however illogical, we want to believe we are in control of our own lives. So if we do everything perfectly, we should never be in bad health. As if any kind of medical condition, physical or mental, had some kind of moral counterpart or was otherwise caused by ones own inadequacy. That way, they could feel better about themselves as healthy, able bodied people.
They could attribute to their own random, luck of the draw, good health, to their own actions and thereby feel good ( or morally superior) about themselves.
If they have to accept that autism, autoimmune disease, or other disabilities can just happen, then they have to come to terms with the reality that, it could have just as easily happened to them, or their kids or their friends…or could happen to them, at random, at anytime.
For a lot of people, that is a scary thought and hard to really comprehend.
Most people are simple people and don’t have the time, energy, or mental bandwidth to really contemplate life and digest difficult things. So they want and need simple answers.
They want to believe that bad things won’t happen to good people.
They want to believe that things happen for straightforward reasons.
People often seek a balance between cause and effect. The notion that sometimes things just happen with no clearly definable reason is a tough one to grasp. For an extreme example (and I’m not trying to poke fun at anyone here), look at religious justifications for nearly anything that boil down to “it’s God’s will” or “it’s part of a divine plan”. It’s much more comforting to think that there’s a cause for every problem that can be addressed, because existentially, the natural world can be terrifying. Sometimes, out of nowhere, so much rain or snow falls from the sky that people die or houses are swept away or buried. Sometimes a flash just sort of happens and suddenly a tree exploded. Bears. My god, bears are a thing for some reason. And sometimes DNA doesn’t form or replicate properly, or other processes happen, and a human is born differently than most others. So there’s the first psychologic issue: “it happened just because it sometimes happens, with no intelligence, guiding hand, or preventable measures” is a difficult and scary concept for a lot of people nowadays.
Compounding the problem is that, in some cases, we can know, to a reasonable degree, what biological function/difference in someone causes their autism, which adds a second line to the issue. Our level of scientific advancement is high enough that, to those not intimately familiar with it, it seems like we should be able to determine a cause for bad things happening. We know why lightning happens. We know why hurricanes form, what can cause a blizzard, and even have solid theories on the evolutionary and environmental processes that made bears. We’ve sent people to the moon. At any given moment, humans are in outer space. We’ve mapped the human genome. We can even tell why, biologically or genetically, someone may be autistic. But if we reject the premise that autism just happens for reasons we can’t control it mitigate – as a great many people have – it then looks ridiculous that we can’t simply find the reason why it exists in the first place.
Obviously science doesn’t work like that. It explains how, and we often have to guess at why, and often just accept that things work the way they do because that’s how the universe works. But again, that’s incompatible with the worldview that all effects must have an equally impactful cause, and if it can’t be nature that caused it, and it certainly can’t be the fault of the parent because that too would lack a purposeful or deliberate culprit, by process of elimination it must be some other factor. Vaccines are just the current scapegoat, and most of the people who desperately want it to be blamed on vaccines would be equally happy if it were blamed on anything else at all, just so long as it isn’t them.
I think it’s just part of a larger narrative that the government, scientists, doctors, etc. are lying to you. This notion has been going on for a long time, and people have been selling alternative medicine cures and crackpot theories for as long as there’s been medicine.
I’ve seen a lot of explanations that suggest these people don’t actually believe these ideas, but rather want to blame something or otherwise need it to be true.
Some people are just more inclined to believe certain weird shit. It’s just what their brain, as it had developed up to that moment as the result of their accumulated experiences, did when they were presented with the concept and the purportedly supporting data. They believed it because it sounded plausible and likely, given their particular interpretation of whatever they saw.
Maybe they didn’t know anything about medicine, autism research, or developmental stages before they received the data. Maybe they had an attitudinal bias that predisposed them to finding the medical and pharmaceutical industries untrustworthy—the fact they’re entirely for-profit entities in some countries is pretty fucked up. Maybe they have such a bias toward the “academic establishment” in general.
Whatever the case, it’s not important to them that the concept have some particular truth value, they just believe, for whatever reason, that it has a positive truth value. Once someone develops a particular disposition with respect to a truth value, it can be psychologically difficult to alter that disposition later, regardless of evidential quality. We don’t really make conscious decisions regarding what we do and don’t believe.
We can perform as though we believe things we don’t believe, but we can’t decide to have a legitimate belief absent epistemological sincerity. People often find it hard to accept that those with opposing attitudes (like beliefs) actually don’t share their same dispositional attitudes, but are rather merely performing as though they don’t for some other type of reason than basic inclination. The anti-vaccine people aren’t performing, it’s just what they’re disposed to believe. Now that it’s their belief, it can be difficult to change that belief due to particular psychological resistances all people possess.
Because this is their belief, it becomes important to them to spread awareness about the danger they believe in. They believe they’re performing an act of empathetic altruism.
The head of your government’s medical agency should probably not be disposed to have such beliefs in an ideal scenario.
The same reason conspiracy theories are so popular.
It’s a big, scary world out there, and you actually have very little control over it, and it’s incredibly comforting to know that things happen for a reason and not just because the universe in its random shittyness decided today is the day you get fucked.
Yeah, it kind of comes down to the Just World fallacy. People want to believe that if you do things right and you’re a good person, then good things will happen to you, and that bad things only happen to bad people. Parenting an autistic child is really hard and because children have to be a certain number of years old before they’re diagnosed, in most cases, you have been parenting an autistic infant and toddler for 2 to 3 years before anyone starts providing you any reasonable help. I spent years being blown off by pediatricians who said that it was differential development and my kid would catch up and I shouldn’t worry so much. And I get it, a. I was a first-time mom, first time mom’s worried too much, but I also had a lot of experience with infants, and at his 6-week appointment I asked if a particular behavior was normal, because it seemed wrong to me. The doctor told me it was just differential development. It would probably even out. They told me this when he didn’t walk until 18 months. They told me this when he couldn’t two-foor jump until he was almost 5 years old — he would watch other kids demonstrate, and he was actively puzzled about how they were doing that. He never stopped moving, ever, he didn’t snuggle, he didn’t relax, he was constantly on the go. He had a terrible time falling asleep. We could only go to parks that were fully fenced in because he would elope, which is the medical term for running off, and doctors would say to me, “oh don’t worry, if he gets far enough away from you he’ll come back. He’s just testing boundaries.” That is not true. He never came back. His impulse to explore was much stronger than his fear of being alone.
By the time he is 3 years old and in preschool, it’s finally obvious that things are not right and I am finally able to get him seen by early intervention, which eventually got me to a developmental pediatrician, who gave us the diagnosis of autism when he was five, and I burst into tears in the doctor’s office, not because I was upset about the diagnosis (which I had known for a long time), but because finally somebody was validating that I was parenting on hard mode with no assistance.
I was so fucking tired. I was exhausted. Other parents were judgmental about my bad parenting — potty training came late — and without a diagnosis you don’t have something to point to. But once you have the diagnosis, then you have stigma around the diagnosis.
People just want it to be someone’s fault. They don’t want to believe that this just randomly happened to their kid. It’s the same reason people put their kids with ADHD on extremely restrictive fad diets, or why they tell teenagers with depression that their lives are great actually and they shouldn’t be sad. If they can find the one thing they’re doing wrong as a parent, they can fix their kid. And when you exist in the world of parents of neurodivergent kids, there are so, so many wackadoos who believe that autism is caused by vaccines or heavy metal poisoning or artificial food dyes or wheat or whatever else the trend of the week is. It’s honestly really hard to find community of parents who are accepting of neurodivergent kids and also believe in science.
But no, this is just a thing that randomly happened. And there’s no one that I can blame, and there’s no lawsuit against big pharma that is going to bring me millions of dollars so that I can actually afford the therapies my kid needs, and there is no compassionate society that is going to provide reasonable supports for disabled children, because we’ve got a guy with a brainworm in charge right now. I will just keep working my butt off to pay for as much of it as I can and do my best by all my kids, And try to be there for other parents going through the diagnostic process, and try to help my kiddo navigate a world that doesn’t always make a ton of sense to him, and be a little exhausted all the time.
Otoh he’s 15 and hilarious and flew a plane in March and does a lot of native habitat restoration work, where he is popular and competent, and freakishly good at spotting weeds and invasives, because he has a mind for visual patterns. He’s a delight.
Some people cannot emotionally handle the fact that things happen on thier own, with no one at fault. Good things and bad things, some things just happen. Some people find anyone or anything to blame, otherwise they blame themselves.
Because if it’s not true then they’re wrong. And if they’re wrong about vaccines what else are they wrong about. The ego cannot and will not take the hit.
I struggled for YEARS before getting diagnosed in college. It was revelatory for me. I was so relieved after years of shame and bewilderment that I was overjoyed!
My diagnosis started a chain reaction of diagnosis in my family. And we all take meds. Except for my one cousin. Why? Bc his parents are too horrified to fully accept that their cherished baby boy had any genetic issue he inherited from them.
And they are just an example of many many parents who have that issue.
To me? It was finding a software patch for my brain. For them? It was a sign they “failed” their child. And if they weren’t too educated to even try to blame modern medicine? They may have tried.
Autism in your child is a life altering thing. And the fact that many kids manifest their symptoms at the same age the have their vaccines? Doesnt help.
Blaming it on the vaccines that are mandated by the same government & schools that too often refuse to give badly needed support gives the parents a scapegoat that removes their genetic guilt and has a concrete focus.
If its not food or vaccines or environmental pollutants that cause autism, that means that it must be my fault and I’m the cause of such a horrible fate.
I can’t accept personal responsibility for a problem.
I’d like to know the same thing. I think some of them want to believe in a benevolent god so much, they can’t bring themselves to imagine god would have done that.
I think others have just fallen on the band again of Facebook memes. How many of our older relatives sent us warnings that someone was putting AIDS needles under car door handles? This was just another chain letter some people fell for.
I knew a family who, according to them, had a child who hit every developmental milestone, including verbal communication and eye contact, up until he was a toddler. They swore he reverted and lost these abilities post vaccine. It was important to them to share their story.
most ppl ive actually met like that either have a child with autism or come from an authoritarian regime background and are generally super neurotic. idk many antivaxxers tho
In my opinion, people like to have answers to things they can’t wrap their heads around. And apparently it’s SO difficult for some to believe that people are just born to think differently. To them it’s not just a problem, but a problem that NEEDS a reason because nature and genetics just isn’t enough
The appeal of all conspiracy theories is that it gives you someone to blame. Some people can’t handle the fact that many of the bad things in their lives are the result of complex circumstances outside of anyone’s control.
As an autistic person reading the comments is actually quite nice to see how many people are aware that the vaccine thing is bullshit and are calling out those people as believing in a conspiracy. It’s definitely one of the nicer threads I’ve seen regarding autism lately.
As an add on, it’s the last day of autism awareness month. A lot of people here seem to be aware that vaccines don’t cause autism (yay, again, love to see it) so why not try reading something completely different about autism that you don’t know? Learn something new 😀
Some ideas for the general public that you could learn either quickly with Google or do an in depth dive if that’s your thing. Of course always check your sources!
The levels of autism and what they mean.
Co-morbidities of autism.
Autism and ADHD.
Autistic colour wheel (a look at what “spectrum” really means. Not “everyone is on the spectrum!”).
Suicide rates in autism.
Famous autistic people!
Autism strengths.
Autism in women.
Autism myths.
Autistic special interests and emotional regulation.
its important to some because they hope for a cure. low functioning autism is basically the same as having a child with developmental issues in the sense of how much of a burden they will be on their parents
its important to some because autism could be worse long term than a quick llness
In my most generous interpretation, people’s greatest fears are uncertainty and powerlessness.
If vaccines cause autism, you feel like you have a sense of control over the circumstances. Don’t want your children to have Autism? Just don’t vaccinate! You have control and certainly. Your greatest fears and anxieties are gone.
Giving some grace to these folks, we all tend to seek the lowest-hanging fruit of consolation for the harshest realities in life.
Doesn’t excuse what they’re overlooking or being willfully ignorant of, but it certainly humanizes their situation.
The answer isn’t about vaccines or autism. It’s about human nature. People generally want to be right. People really want their intuition and instincts to be right because for it to be wrong sort of goes against their own survival. More intelligent people have learned to allow logic and reason to override their instincts and intuition, so they are ok with changing their views as they learn new things. Less intelligent people think that their instinct and intuition IS logic and reason, so they are much less likely to accept new information that could change their views.
As the science evolves it is becoming more and more likely that it is due to genetics. Which means, it’s their DNA that contributed to their child being autistic. There was no big bad villain. It was literally their fault.
They don’t want to take blame for it so they try to blame it on anything else.
Comments
Because the political right wing has made it part of their campaign platform that vaccines are bad
Because it satisfies their need to be special, so they can say that big pharma swindled everyone but them.
My wife’s friend just can’t handle the notion that her kid is autistic due to “nature”. She has always needed someone to blame.
The idea that there is someone to blame is much more comforting to people than that their kid got fucked over by completely random chance.
you see it everywhere. its why people are so inclined to believe conspiracy theories like the illuminati and stuff
They want justification for the lies they’ve been told by the far right.
Because if a vaccine caused it it can’t be genetic, therefore not their fault.
Parents desperately don’t want their kid’s autism to be “their fault” or “random chance.” They want someone or something to blame. If it weren’t vaccines, it would be something else.
So that they wouldn’t have to look in the mirror and admit that autism often has a strong hereditary component
Everyone likes to be told they’re right
Conspiracy theorists are especially prone to beliefs that’s they are being lied to, especially when it’s the professional class, like doctors.
Because if it’s their genetics, they have to acknowledge they’re the problem (it is and they are, obviously).
It’s just like the flat Earth society. They think they have uncovered some hidden conspiracy that no one else knows about and they are smarter than every egghead “elitist” scientist who works on the issue every day of their lives.
It’s basically narcissism meets such low intelligence that it feeds back in the narcissism.
Probably because the only other theorized explanation is genetics and parents and family of autistics can not handle the thought of being “that “weird themselves
When this fully debunked theory became politicized, it was a done deal. Very cynical and targeted propaganda. Effective when you think you’ve been failed by the government and/or the Western medical model.
Back when it was just Jenny McCartney and the genetics of Autism weren’t entirely known: parents needed some type of reason on why their bubbly kid disappeared at 2. Her claiming vaccines filled in that feeling of “did I cause this” with “no, science did” and absolved parents from the guilt society was pushing at the time towards parents. I don’t know if that pressure is as prevalent now, but back in the 90s it was common for religions to say if there’s something wrong with the child it’s because the parents sinned in some way. A lot of those religions were at their peak in the 90s.
So being able to point at something that says “my child was born perfect” means the parents didn’t cause it through sinning, and then “vaccines did it” meant the parents didn’t cause it by being bad parents—the government did.
They have constructed their entire personalities and worldview around it. Hard to walk away from the cult.
Because people don’t like the idea that autism is something that just happens. People do not like living in a world where unfortunate things happen randomly without explanation. It’s a scary idea. So they come up with conspiracies to make themselves feel better.
And then opportunistic pundits and politicians take advantage of this fear for their own purposes.
So they don’t have to vaccinate themselves or their children. Also, to “prove” modern vaccines cause problems that “didn’t exist” any time before 2000.
Confirmation bias is a strong force
Here’s a video of a scientist delving into, among other things, the psychology of why people cling to pseudoscience despite overwhelming evidence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4dhaPbPOps
Because they are searching for a reason why exists. People want answers. They want to know why autism is effecting people. In reality…there really aren’t any. It just does. Maybe with some genetic probability in there. Life sucks. Sometimes things just happen.
Unfortunately a long time ago a man who’s medical license was revoked for doing little to no research in his studies released a paper saying that vaccines caused autism. And ever since, people have run with it despite the fact the original author was barred from clinical studies for essentially being a fraud.
Because they are afraid to look in the mirror and see it reflected back at them. Autism is genetic and they are afraid they might also have it.
They’re ableist and afraid of Autistic people or their children being/becoming Autistic.
Dealing with autism is hard. People want someone to blame.
They want something to “blame” for it. If it wasn’t vaccines, they would be blaming something else.
Because they can’t accept that life can deal them a crappy hand so it must be someone else’s fault and not their genes.
I have read that belief in conspiracy theories is, in part, fueled by the positive effect possession of ‘secret knowledge’ has on the conspirators’ egos. For those whose rejection of vaccines have had dire consequences, for themselves or others, the ego effect is doubly important, because if they’re wrong and could’ve prevented said consequences, it would be a serious (possibly irrecoverable) blow to said egos.
It is easier than realizing it is quite complicated.
Being autistic myself, it was no surprise when 1 of my 3 kids was diagnosed with autism also.
I don’t quite understand the die hard rhetoric from these people.
Even IF, in some crazy world, vaccines caused autism in 1/100 kids, it would still be better then dying from polio or measles or whatever the fuck.
Honest answer – Most of those people don’t think the issue has been adequately studied. And now – because the autism umbrella has been expanded to cover so many more people – the truth will probably take even longer to figure out.
Its important to understand that when this idea first started – the 1980s to my knowledge – even most people who suspected vaccines did not think that ALL vaccines caused ALL autism. But parents of some of the autistic kids noticed that their previously normal kids started regressing in the weeks and months after a round of routine vaccinations. ( yes – thats how it happens with some kids. I know that NOW, in 2025, its taboo to say that. In 2025 the idea is that ALL kids on the spectrum are just born that way.) The parents wanted this to be studied and no one wanted to do it because of liability ( $$$ ) issues. Then a “researcher” came along with a bogus research paper and tainted everything forever.
Its also important to understand that – at that time – autism was blamed on mothers – saying they were at fault for not bonding adequately to their young children – that they were “cold” and that autism was their result. Large swaths of the mainstream medical community actually promoted that cruel nonsense. So you can see how a loving parent – who KNEW they didn’t do anything wrong – would be trying to figure out the mystery of what caused their child who previously smiled and said simple words to stop doing those things.
People love to ridicule parents who blame vaccines. But no one ever wants to ridicule the doctors who used to blame autism on the mothers “not bonding” with their children. Its beyond hypocritical IMHO.
I think because it’s a “reason”.
People don’t like not knowing why something is how it is. You give them a thing to blame, likely something they don’t truly understand (like the science behind vaccines) and say, “This is why.” and they’ll cling to it.
It’s because of eugenics: they’d rather have a dead kid then a “damaged” kid.
It hurts their ego that they have a “damaged” kid.
Because people who have never been taught critical thinking skills can’t conceive of bad things happening without there being someone/thing to blame. It’s the same bad programming that makes people susceptible to conspiracy theories, and it’s getting worse and worse the longer we let it go on.
Because then autism is a genetic thing. Which mean it came from them. It has to be someone else’s fault. Always.
People want control or they get scared especially with things they don’t understand.
Autism isn’t a thing people can control and some people don’t understand it.
People fall into the trap of the community of antivaxers who claim to have control and ‘true’ understanding.
One guy published a super unverifiable study a while ago and people latched on to it for a shred of legitimacy.
Admitting to being wrong is harder than doubling down and it gets harder the more one doubles down.
Admitting to not only others but to yourself that you don’t have control and have been fighting the wrong fight for maybe years is difficult.
My guess: because it makes them feel smart, when they are anything but. It makes them feel like “they were wise to it aaaaaaaaall along…..”. So fucking dumb.
Btw, u got the COVID vaccine and all the boosters. Wasn’t my dick supposed to fly off my body by now or something?
Because it’s an explanation as to why their kids are who they are.
My wife’s son is autistic. Not even a “little”….she fucking HATES this quirky “omg I’m so autistic” phase people are doing because it detracts from real autistic kids.
I’m gonna be an asshole here…
Liking something doesn’t mean you’re fucking autistic.
Finding something intriguing doesn’t either.
You’re not fucking autistic, you’re w dumb bitch with a hobby who wants attention.
Watch a kid throw a huge fit bc things don’t like up right. Watch them scream because colors don’t match. Watch as a child has a literal fucking meltdown because the shades of the sky don’t match.
Fuck all you fake ass autistc kids who blast shit online for views. You ruin the actual chance an autistic child gets help because “omg I like trains a lot”
Most of you aren’t autistic. You just want the fucking attention that comes with. Watch a child have a full meltdown over colors and then come to me with your “omg like..
The color pink makes me feel weird” bullshit.
The thought they gave it to their kid, or that God did, just doesn’t fly for them.
Morons. Ask the same question of dwarfism, blindness, deafness. Shit happens, acceptance is the solution.
People like this are just losers who have done nothing with their lives, or they don’t want to admit they’re stupid, so they believe these conspiracies to make themselves feel like they’re smarter than everyone else.
They have to blame something.
People want a solution to a problem, they don’t want to think that it might be something that they did to cause it
I have autism, and I want to know what’s causing the spike in autism cases (I’m aware it’s not vaccines) rather than just treating symptoms, because I wouldn’t recommend having it. It’s not “look at me, I’m so quirky”—it genuinely sucks sometimes to struggle with the smallest things.
Gist of it is that people need an explanation, and more than that they need an explanation that exempts them from blame.
In addition to the other great explanations above I want to add that Autism is genetic so if your kid is autistic then it’s highly likely you are too.
But a lot of people with ASD level 1 had it beaten out of them at an early age and internalized and denied it. Accepting that its genetic means accepting they are autistic too and that their parents abused them.
A friend of mine is autistic and so is her mom, but her mom is deep in denial and takes it out on her daughter.
Because they’re idiots and they’re unwilling to read the mountains of evidence showing that there’s no link
People worship nature like a god and think doctors and therapists cure things instead of making them comfortable to live with. It’s the same as saying trans people should go to therapy, when literally every trans person had to already. They want things to just… go back to “normal” on a prayer or hard work. They believe in universal desserts: the idea that the universe gives people what they deserve and is never arbitrary or unfair.
Fear mongering.
Because some people think their babies were normal until they got their first vaccines. Since the series of vaccines happens throughout the first two years of life, there’s a pretty high chance that the kid will have had a vaccine close to whenever the parents notice that something is different about their child.
My sister is autistic and she was different basically from birth. She was the 3rd child and so her differences were very obvious to my parents from the beginning. My cousin with autism is the third of 4 children and it was the same story with him. But I can see how people with fewer children to compare to might not notice anything until their child gets to an age where the symptoms become more pronounced.
To justify their antivaxx stance
To have someone to blame for their autistic kid that isn’t god, nature or themselves?
Not that long ago the reason given for autism was ‘refrigerator mothers’. (Basically saying you didn’t love your kid enough during gestation so now they have autism). So when someone came up with another reason/excuse parents kind of jumped on it
Because they want it to be preventable and haven’t really seen a world pre-vaccine. And they listen to a long debunked paper written by a man trying to discredit the mmr vaccine to promote his own.
Because the alternative is that it’s their fault via genetics.
It’s the same reason people have religion.
When people can’t explain something, they make a mental leap, some correlation, some story.
I think because if it was that would make it a lot easier to prevent. Autism is a really serious lifelong disability that has a huge impact on one’s life even in the most mild forms. It would be wonderful if it was as simple as not vaccinating
Control and denial. “COVID only kills old and/or obese people.” “Cancer only happens to people who make bad choices.” “Autism is preventable; just avoid the shots.”
People fear death, disability, illness, suffering, discomfort, and even inconvenience. They’ll come up with rituals, religions, superstitions, health and fitness regimes, etc, to ward off the evils of life.
Having something you can blame and avoid makes people feel better. “That won’t happen to me/my loved one, because xyz.”
I dont know that its not vaccines that cause it, in basic training i was given several injections, i lost all my strength and now have a bunch of problems, before i was lifting 200 lbs in the gym and now i can barely lift 5 and i have immense fatigue, im diagnosed with fibromyalgia which means we dont know wtf is wrong with you
I obviously had an allergic reaction but millions of other recruits had no problem with the vaccines, it would be almost impossible to prove that it was the vaccines thats the only thing i can think of
Perhaps vaccines cause autism in the child directly or perhaps it lingers in the parent and changes something in them, idk, anything is possible, its also possible its not vaccines but all the chemicals in our water and meals
As far as wanting to believe its vaccines causing autism prob cause they feel guilty, they were selfish and wanted a child and now that child has problems
Post Modernism/Post Post Modernism
Everything is about distrusting, shitting on or tearing down establishments.
Reddit is extremely prone to it too.
Mix a distrust of the medical establishment, to an “unsolved” trend of increasing autism.
I mean, even we have to admit “we are just better at recognizing it” sounds like cope. It’s nearly unverifiable making it surprisingly unscientific for a science based establishment.
There is some evidence though, in the form of the number of patients who had regularly been seeing psychiatrists or psychologists for a long time and are only diagnosed recently. This strongly supports the
Then of course there is the the simple fact when you have a kid with autism, it’s easier to feel angry at someone, rather than something beyond your control, or even worse your higher power if they have one. Blaming your god brings all kinds of thoughts like, what did I do wrong, why would god be doing this to me, am I being tested?
because that’s how belief works….
They are invested in it, they have watched a lot of YouTube about it
“Problem is not people believing earth is flat. Problem is people believe we’re lying to them when we say it’s a sphere”
I think a lot of people look for something to blame because we have no single cause.
because if it’s genetic, then at least one of the parents* has to accept something about themself that they don’t want to accept
*I know it’s not this simple. and you know. but the parents in question don’t, so I’m working from what they think is happening
How shameful that we live in a world where parents value a dead child more over a healthy autistic child.
Probably have their whole world view pegged and then expanded from this bullshit lie that keeps popping up due to rich influencers who have zero medical training or knowledge.
Kind of like basing any and all vehicle repairs for your vehicle based on the ramblings of a lunatic you pass at the traffic lights. “Well he sees lots of cars so he must know something about them…?”
I think that people can look at the UFO-believers that were around a couple of decades ago. Their faith in the visits was also very strong and partially hung up on ego and personal conviction.
There are elements of religion in it where people need to believe, they see belief in their surroundings and then they make a personal kosmology, an idea of how the world works.
The “autism-thing” will likely be replaced by some other lie when the people and reasons behind it dies out.
People want simple solutions to complex problems. The root of a lot of chaos and drifters unfortunately comes down to people preying on that human desire.
Because they want something to blame other than their own genetics.
Anytime someone says this I respond with “actually it’s probably the micro plastics and tire particulates.”
I don’t care if it’s also not true, but if they become as fanatical about plastics as they are about vaccines, maybe we could save the whales or something.
They’re more afraid of wearing masks in public than contracting polio
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
I know a family that has two kids, both sons, both with ASD. The older one’s
Is more severe. Although the mother will now state that Vaccines don’t cause it, she has mentioned that her older child was diagnosed before the second one was born, so “I need to ask for the Vaccines that didn’t have mercury in them.”
That makes it sound to me as if she DOES believe Vaccines had a role in it.
Her husband is in denial. He thinks he’s a big, macho man, and he was the big man on campus in his little tiny rural town. He can’t go strutting around town having kids, especially sons , diagnosed with Autism. He thinks he’s God’s gift to his state, and, naturally, could only produce son’s as perfect and macho as he is. He’s an asshat
If they don’t blame the vaccines they feel forced to blame theirselves which isn’t necessarily correct either.
The other important question here is – why is it so important for some people to self diagnose themselves with autism and never stop talking about it
Alcoholism
Honestly, having it be genetic is just a good of a “reason” or a thing to blame as any other rationalization. Bunch of people in here projecting some kind of blame on people for their genetic makeup which they can’t change – DISGUSTING.
Because they are conservatives and so very much invested in ideas about good and bad people being that way by birth; thus if genetics cause autism by their own convictions they are bad, which is intolerable.
A lot of it is about denial. Another part is trying to find a simple and easy to grasp cause. (And then probably another part is some conspiracy nonsense or whatever, but that feels connected to both other factors)
As someone with an autoimmune disease, diagnosed later in life, it’s an interesting experience. It seems like a similar experience to how people react to an autism diagnosis or other conditions.
Immediately people around me were looking for reasons as to why it happened. They wanted something to blame for my condition. Because, to them, random chance just didn’t make sense or wasn’t a satisfying answer. So they needed to look elsewhere, to blame something else, anything else.
All kinds of crazy theories were thrown at me. From dietary choices to birth control, and everything in between.
Whether directly, or indirectly, a lot of people pointed at things that would imply that my condition was, in some way, my OWN fault.
Why? Because it was a sense of comfort to them. Because, however illogical, we want to believe we are in control of our own lives. So if we do everything perfectly, we should never be in bad health. As if any kind of medical condition, physical or mental, had some kind of moral counterpart or was otherwise caused by ones own inadequacy. That way, they could feel better about themselves as healthy, able bodied people.
They could attribute to their own random, luck of the draw, good health, to their own actions and thereby feel good ( or morally superior) about themselves.
If they have to accept that autism, autoimmune disease, or other disabilities can just happen, then they have to come to terms with the reality that, it could have just as easily happened to them, or their kids or their friends…or could happen to them, at random, at anytime.
For a lot of people, that is a scary thought and hard to really comprehend.
Most people are simple people and don’t have the time, energy, or mental bandwidth to really contemplate life and digest difficult things. So they want and need simple answers.
They want to believe that bad things won’t happen to good people.
They want to believe that things happen for straightforward reasons.
Of course, reality is rarely ever so simple.
People often seek a balance between cause and effect. The notion that sometimes things just happen with no clearly definable reason is a tough one to grasp. For an extreme example (and I’m not trying to poke fun at anyone here), look at religious justifications for nearly anything that boil down to “it’s God’s will” or “it’s part of a divine plan”. It’s much more comforting to think that there’s a cause for every problem that can be addressed, because existentially, the natural world can be terrifying. Sometimes, out of nowhere, so much rain or snow falls from the sky that people die or houses are swept away or buried. Sometimes a flash just sort of happens and suddenly a tree exploded. Bears. My god, bears are a thing for some reason. And sometimes DNA doesn’t form or replicate properly, or other processes happen, and a human is born differently than most others. So there’s the first psychologic issue: “it happened just because it sometimes happens, with no intelligence, guiding hand, or preventable measures” is a difficult and scary concept for a lot of people nowadays.
Compounding the problem is that, in some cases, we can know, to a reasonable degree, what biological function/difference in someone causes their autism, which adds a second line to the issue. Our level of scientific advancement is high enough that, to those not intimately familiar with it, it seems like we should be able to determine a cause for bad things happening. We know why lightning happens. We know why hurricanes form, what can cause a blizzard, and even have solid theories on the evolutionary and environmental processes that made bears. We’ve sent people to the moon. At any given moment, humans are in outer space. We’ve mapped the human genome. We can even tell why, biologically or genetically, someone may be autistic. But if we reject the premise that autism just happens for reasons we can’t control it mitigate – as a great many people have – it then looks ridiculous that we can’t simply find the reason why it exists in the first place.
Obviously science doesn’t work like that. It explains how, and we often have to guess at why, and often just accept that things work the way they do because that’s how the universe works. But again, that’s incompatible with the worldview that all effects must have an equally impactful cause, and if it can’t be nature that caused it, and it certainly can’t be the fault of the parent because that too would lack a purposeful or deliberate culprit, by process of elimination it must be some other factor. Vaccines are just the current scapegoat, and most of the people who desperately want it to be blamed on vaccines would be equally happy if it were blamed on anything else at all, just so long as it isn’t them.
What if they find out that it’s because people are shitty parents?
I think it’s just part of a larger narrative that the government, scientists, doctors, etc. are lying to you. This notion has been going on for a long time, and people have been selling alternative medicine cures and crackpot theories for as long as there’s been medicine.
For a long time autism was associated with parental, particularly motherly, neglect.
There has been a *fierce* movement to deny that and find other “causes” for autism.
I’ve seen a lot of explanations that suggest these people don’t actually believe these ideas, but rather want to blame something or otherwise need it to be true.
Some people are just more inclined to believe certain weird shit. It’s just what their brain, as it had developed up to that moment as the result of their accumulated experiences, did when they were presented with the concept and the purportedly supporting data. They believed it because it sounded plausible and likely, given their particular interpretation of whatever they saw.
Maybe they didn’t know anything about medicine, autism research, or developmental stages before they received the data. Maybe they had an attitudinal bias that predisposed them to finding the medical and pharmaceutical industries untrustworthy—the fact they’re entirely for-profit entities in some countries is pretty fucked up. Maybe they have such a bias toward the “academic establishment” in general.
Whatever the case, it’s not important to them that the concept have some particular truth value, they just believe, for whatever reason, that it has a positive truth value. Once someone develops a particular disposition with respect to a truth value, it can be psychologically difficult to alter that disposition later, regardless of evidential quality. We don’t really make conscious decisions regarding what we do and don’t believe.
We can perform as though we believe things we don’t believe, but we can’t decide to have a legitimate belief absent epistemological sincerity. People often find it hard to accept that those with opposing attitudes (like beliefs) actually don’t share their same dispositional attitudes, but are rather merely performing as though they don’t for some other type of reason than basic inclination. The anti-vaccine people aren’t performing, it’s just what they’re disposed to believe. Now that it’s their belief, it can be difficult to change that belief due to particular psychological resistances all people possess.
Because this is their belief, it becomes important to them to spread awareness about the danger they believe in. They believe they’re performing an act of empathetic altruism.
The head of your government’s medical agency should probably not be disposed to have such beliefs in an ideal scenario.
They want to think they will be able to control whether their kid has it or not.
Something to blame. One of those “I told you so” moments
The same reason conspiracy theories are so popular.
It’s a big, scary world out there, and you actually have very little control over it, and it’s incredibly comforting to know that things happen for a reason and not just because the universe in its random shittyness decided today is the day you get fucked.
Yeah, it kind of comes down to the Just World fallacy. People want to believe that if you do things right and you’re a good person, then good things will happen to you, and that bad things only happen to bad people. Parenting an autistic child is really hard and because children have to be a certain number of years old before they’re diagnosed, in most cases, you have been parenting an autistic infant and toddler for 2 to 3 years before anyone starts providing you any reasonable help. I spent years being blown off by pediatricians who said that it was differential development and my kid would catch up and I shouldn’t worry so much. And I get it, a. I was a first-time mom, first time mom’s worried too much, but I also had a lot of experience with infants, and at his 6-week appointment I asked if a particular behavior was normal, because it seemed wrong to me. The doctor told me it was just differential development. It would probably even out. They told me this when he didn’t walk until 18 months. They told me this when he couldn’t two-foor jump until he was almost 5 years old — he would watch other kids demonstrate, and he was actively puzzled about how they were doing that. He never stopped moving, ever, he didn’t snuggle, he didn’t relax, he was constantly on the go. He had a terrible time falling asleep. We could only go to parks that were fully fenced in because he would elope, which is the medical term for running off, and doctors would say to me, “oh don’t worry, if he gets far enough away from you he’ll come back. He’s just testing boundaries.” That is not true. He never came back. His impulse to explore was much stronger than his fear of being alone.
By the time he is 3 years old and in preschool, it’s finally obvious that things are not right and I am finally able to get him seen by early intervention, which eventually got me to a developmental pediatrician, who gave us the diagnosis of autism when he was five, and I burst into tears in the doctor’s office, not because I was upset about the diagnosis (which I had known for a long time), but because finally somebody was validating that I was parenting on hard mode with no assistance.
I was so fucking tired. I was exhausted. Other parents were judgmental about my bad parenting — potty training came late — and without a diagnosis you don’t have something to point to. But once you have the diagnosis, then you have stigma around the diagnosis.
People just want it to be someone’s fault. They don’t want to believe that this just randomly happened to their kid. It’s the same reason people put their kids with ADHD on extremely restrictive fad diets, or why they tell teenagers with depression that their lives are great actually and they shouldn’t be sad. If they can find the one thing they’re doing wrong as a parent, they can fix their kid. And when you exist in the world of parents of neurodivergent kids, there are so, so many wackadoos who believe that autism is caused by vaccines or heavy metal poisoning or artificial food dyes or wheat or whatever else the trend of the week is. It’s honestly really hard to find community of parents who are accepting of neurodivergent kids and also believe in science.
But no, this is just a thing that randomly happened. And there’s no one that I can blame, and there’s no lawsuit against big pharma that is going to bring me millions of dollars so that I can actually afford the therapies my kid needs, and there is no compassionate society that is going to provide reasonable supports for disabled children, because we’ve got a guy with a brainworm in charge right now. I will just keep working my butt off to pay for as much of it as I can and do my best by all my kids, And try to be there for other parents going through the diagnostic process, and try to help my kiddo navigate a world that doesn’t always make a ton of sense to him, and be a little exhausted all the time.
Otoh he’s 15 and hilarious and flew a plane in March and does a lot of native habitat restoration work, where he is popular and competent, and freakishly good at spotting weeds and invasives, because he has a mind for visual patterns. He’s a delight.
If autism is someone’s fault, then that means that it doesn’t just show up at random and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.
Some people cannot emotionally handle the fact that things happen on thier own, with no one at fault. Good things and bad things, some things just happen. Some people find anyone or anything to blame, otherwise they blame themselves.
Still dickheads for that though.
Because if you don’t have anyone to blame, you’ll have to accept that we’re ‘normal’ and not some unnatural mutation stemmed from “bad chemicals”.
Because if it’s not true then they’re wrong. And if they’re wrong about vaccines what else are they wrong about. The ego cannot and will not take the hit.
I have ADD and irlens syndrome.
I struggled for YEARS before getting diagnosed in college. It was revelatory for me. I was so relieved after years of shame and bewilderment that I was overjoyed!
My diagnosis started a chain reaction of diagnosis in my family. And we all take meds. Except for my one cousin. Why? Bc his parents are too horrified to fully accept that their cherished baby boy had any genetic issue he inherited from them.
And they are just an example of many many parents who have that issue.
To me? It was finding a software patch for my brain. For them? It was a sign they “failed” their child. And if they weren’t too educated to even try to blame modern medicine? They may have tried.
Autism in your child is a life altering thing. And the fact that many kids manifest their symptoms at the same age the have their vaccines? Doesnt help.
Blaming it on the vaccines that are mandated by the same government & schools that too often refuse to give badly needed support gives the parents a scapegoat that removes their genetic guilt and has a concrete focus.
because they need something to blame.
A misconception on what an autism diagnosis means, thinking it’s a big scary boogeyman, and also denial.
If its not food or vaccines or environmental pollutants that cause autism, that means that it must be my fault and I’m the cause of such a horrible fate.
I can’t accept personal responsibility for a problem.
It has to be somebody else’s fault!
People want to be able to be in control. If you find something to blame then you can say “it won’t happen to me because…”
I’d like to know the same thing. I think some of them want to believe in a benevolent god so much, they can’t bring themselves to imagine god would have done that.
I think others have just fallen on the band again of Facebook memes. How many of our older relatives sent us warnings that someone was putting AIDS needles under car door handles? This was just another chain letter some people fell for.
Wasn’t this whole thing debunked anyway?
I knew a family who, according to them, had a child who hit every developmental milestone, including verbal communication and eye contact, up until he was a toddler. They swore he reverted and lost these abilities post vaccine. It was important to them to share their story.
most ppl ive actually met like that either have a child with autism or come from an authoritarian regime background and are generally super neurotic. idk many antivaxxers tho
In my opinion, people like to have answers to things they can’t wrap their heads around. And apparently it’s SO difficult for some to believe that people are just born to think differently. To them it’s not just a problem, but a problem that NEEDS a reason because nature and genetics just isn’t enough
Because back in their day they had eccentric people and loners, no one was autistic therefore no one can be autistic.
So their logic is it must be vaccines or if you label someone as autistic then they become autistic and you are a bad parent for labelling your child.
The appeal of all conspiracy theories is that it gives you someone to blame. Some people can’t handle the fact that many of the bad things in their lives are the result of complex circumstances outside of anyone’s control.
As an autistic person reading the comments is actually quite nice to see how many people are aware that the vaccine thing is bullshit and are calling out those people as believing in a conspiracy. It’s definitely one of the nicer threads I’ve seen regarding autism lately.
As an add on, it’s the last day of autism awareness month. A lot of people here seem to be aware that vaccines don’t cause autism (yay, again, love to see it) so why not try reading something completely different about autism that you don’t know? Learn something new 😀
Some ideas for the general public that you could learn either quickly with Google or do an in depth dive if that’s your thing. Of course always check your sources!
The levels of autism and what they mean.
Co-morbidities of autism.
Autism and ADHD.
Autistic colour wheel (a look at what “spectrum” really means. Not “everyone is on the spectrum!”).
Suicide rates in autism.
Famous autistic people!
Autism strengths.
Autism in women.
Autism myths.
Autistic special interests and emotional regulation.
Autism cultural differences.
Because they need something simple to blame which also absolves them of any responsibility.
Otherwise we.d have to look st our culture and our terrible diet
Because they hate autistic people (and anyone that deviates from “the norm”)
Need for control and a fundamental misunderstanding of the condition.
For the original person who claimed it: to sell a competing vaccine for MMR.
its important to some because they hope for a cure. low functioning autism is basically the same as having a child with developmental issues in the sense of how much of a burden they will be on their parents
its important to some because autism could be worse long term than a quick llness
Why would people deny that autism is genetically transferred?
Because science directly threatens a superstitious worldview. Survival thereof makes science the boogeyman, or at best a fairweather friend.
In my most generous interpretation, people’s greatest fears are uncertainty and powerlessness.
If vaccines cause autism, you feel like you have a sense of control over the circumstances. Don’t want your children to have Autism? Just don’t vaccinate! You have control and certainly. Your greatest fears and anxieties are gone.
Giving some grace to these folks, we all tend to seek the lowest-hanging fruit of consolation for the harshest realities in life.
Doesn’t excuse what they’re overlooking or being willfully ignorant of, but it certainly humanizes their situation.
The answer isn’t about vaccines or autism. It’s about human nature. People generally want to be right. People really want their intuition and instincts to be right because for it to be wrong sort of goes against their own survival. More intelligent people have learned to allow logic and reason to override their instincts and intuition, so they are ok with changing their views as they learn new things. Less intelligent people think that their instinct and intuition IS logic and reason, so they are much less likely to accept new information that could change their views.
Because they’re idiots.
As the science evolves it is becoming more and more likely that it is due to genetics. Which means, it’s their DNA that contributed to their child being autistic. There was no big bad villain. It was literally their fault.
They don’t want to take blame for it so they try to blame it on anything else.