This is a persistent rumor that has been going on for decades: mandatory vaccines, which governments intend to strengthen, would be responsible for cases of autism.

The French government plans to increase the number of mandatory early childhood vaccines in early 2018, but a group of about 100 families, Autism Vaccination, doesn’t want to hear about it.

They plan to bring four pharmaceutical companies (Sanofi, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline) to justice in September, convinced that there is a link between vaccination and autism, Le Parisien reports. Is that really the case?

The answer is no, according to the five independent US studies conducted since 1998. None has been able to prove that there is a causal link between vaccinations and the onset of autism in children.

But then, where does this persistent rumor come from?

A study ? No, a “scientific fraud”

In 1998, a study by British doctor Andrew Wakefield published in the medical journal “The Lancet” attempted to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The article, however, contained gross errors of analysis and methodology, and the scientific community soon began to criticize the work of the British surgeon.

In 2004, “The Lancet” even issued a statement completely refuting the findings of the study, speaking of “scientific fraud”. In 2007, it was revealed that Andrew Wakefield had been paid close to 600,000 euros by a British lawyer wishing to sue the laboratory producing the vaccine.

These arguments, however, do not seem to have convinced the members of the association Autism Vaccination. Martine Ferguson-André, a member of Europe’s Ecology-The Greens (EELV), who calls herself a “wake-up caller”, says her own son has become autistic as a result of five Vaccine when he was only ten months old.