First of, I would like to clarify that our family follows all the requirements set forth for vaccination especially, considering that I have taught several public health courses, and have also had students look into the topic for classroom projects. If that were the case, why this article? This article is to address concerns that have been brought up in the media again and again. To eliminate those concerns, it is important for the scientific community to publish scientific work revolving around the following set of data given below.

There has been debate for a while about the use of vaccines and its impact on autism. This concern stems from a work in England almost couple of decades back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/us/a-discredited-vaccine-studys-continuing-impact-on-public-health.html?_r=0

Though we have to be careful about any long-term impact of any vaccines, we need to consider the herd immunity that comes with vaccination especially, while dealing with outbreaks such as the one involving measles that we currently see in US. At the same time, we also need to perform evidence based analysis to negate any such concerns. As part of this process, I would like medical researchers working in the vaccination and autism area to look into the following and make that data available for further analysis, if such data analysis were to be performed -

1. What is the vaccination rate across US and other parts of the world especially, for those vaccines with concerns of autism?

2. What is the prevalence and incidence rate for autism (if data is available for the same population- it would be even better)?

3. Do we have any genetic information available for those children affected by autism and how this genetic information connects to their parents?

4. Is there any relationship between autism and environment - poverty, family trauma, family conditions, family-related mental disorders?

5. Any other association with any other variable?

6. How effective are vaccines, in general?

By answering these questions, we could show that there are many other variables that results in autism, and may not be tied to vaccination.