'31% believe vaccines may cause autism,' finds Tipperary project for Young Scientist final

A Tipperary teenager is in Dublin this week, presenting her project at the Stripe Young Scientist finals in the RDS. 

Disability rights campaigner Cara Darmody will be showing visitors her project for the next four days at the competition, which is about Autism Misinformation & Misconceptions.

It comes as President Trump has once again posted about vaccines in the last 24 hours, as he's just changed the US vaccination schedule that will no doubt lead to further vaccine hesitancy.

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As part of her project, Cara interviewed a huge number of 10,373 adults in Ireland and found a serious issue with vaccines. 31% stated that they either don't know, or believe, that vaccines may cause autism (broken down as follows 3% strongly agree that vaccines cause Autism, 5% agree, 23% unsure).

"That level of doubt in the population is shocking, especially when the number surveyed ensures a margin of error of just 1%," said Cara.

Some of Cara's other main findings include:

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• 12% are adults are either unsure, or believe, that Paracetamol may cause autism.
• Only 51% believe autism is mainly genetic in nature.
• 15% weren't sure, or believe, that autism can be cured.
• 45% weren't sure, or believe, that autism can somehow develop later in life.

Cara then surveyed over 800 teenagers and established similar Autism Misinformation among them. She then showed 247 of them an "Autism Myth-busting" video of her giving the facts about autism, asked them to repeat the survey, and the results of that last survey were significant as the misinformation was substantially corrected in every question posed.

Speaking more about her project, Cara said: "Autism Misinformation is a major problem in Ireland. The information I've uncovered about the doubts people have about vaccines is quite worrying."

"We need around 95% of people to be vaccinated to achieve what's called Herd Immunity, but the HSE state that we're now down to around 90%, so the last thing we need to see is so many people having such doubts about the taking of vaccines. And President Trump's behaviour & statements aren't going to help."

"President Trump has put out a lot of false information about autism and vaccines over the years. And that's not my opinion, that's what every proper Health authority in the world has said about his theories."

"I was shocked to find out that we have no proper education programme in our schools about autism in general, or vaccine misinformation, which then provides an environment for misinformation to spread."

"So I'll be recommending that the Government prepare and implement an immediate education programme for schools, and then to also consider a specific national media campaign to tackle adult misinformation that exists."

"The failure for children to take their vaccines can result in serious illness and even death according to the HSE. So that's why I'm calling on the Government to act swiftly here."