Nobody knows the true causes of autism, yet there are lots of different theories, and some of them say there’s a link between autism and vaccination. NEWS.am Medicine spoke about this to Asst. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA Health System and founding director of International Child Development Center Ira Paul Heilveil.

Professor Heilveil thinks this is a very controversial topic, since nobody really knows the true causes of autism. According to Mr Heilveil, people usually link autism with vaccination because autism tends to first appear at the age of 18 months – that’s about the same time when a specific vaccination is given to children. Very often, the symptoms of autism appear shortly after the vaccination is given.

“There is a preservative used in some vaccines called Thiomersal (thimerosal), which is made primarily of mercury. The symptoms of mercury poisoning are the same symptoms that children with autism have. So the theory is very elegant. But the problem with this theory is that it is not true. Because when you take the preservative out of the vaccine, you still have the same number of children with autism. So most responsible scientists and researchers do not believe there’s a connection between autism and vaccination,” professor Heilveil said.

He also said that there is some interesting research showing that “children without autism typically have the same amount of these heavy metals like mercury as children with autism.”

On the other hand, professor Heilveil said that though many scientists believe that this theory is not valid, “it’s still possible that for some children, a combination of factors that may include vaccination can still be a cause.”

But still, professor Heilveil thinks that the danger of not having the vaccination and getting the disease and infecting other children is much worse than the danger of getting autism.

NEWS.am Medicine asked the parents of some autistic children if they had undergone vaccination. Two mothers said their children had received some vaccination, yet the third mother said that her child did not get any vaccine.