Vaccination and autism connection illustrated by 12-year-old video blogger
A 12-year-old video blogger from Mexico gained widespread attention when he uploaded a video to Facebook on May 24, starting by saying that doctors had been lying to the public about the evidence connecting vaccination to autism.
"I've got every single document I've found and put it in this folder right here," Marco Arturo says in his video, holding up a folder titled "Evidence That Vaccines Cause Autism."
"I will go page by page reading and explaining everything I've got in here because it's a lot of information," Arturo says.
The "scienctist," as Arturo refers to himself on Facebook, then begins to pull out blank pieces of paper from the folder.
"There's nothing," he says. "I think it might be because there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that vaccines are linked to autism in any way whatsoever."
Arturo continues by naming the different diseases that vaccines protect children from, including polio, measles and smallpox.
"It's your choice if you're going to expose your child to deadly diseases, but you know it's not just your child," he says. "It's also everyone else's child, because you read some forwarded email."
Arturo ends the video, which has received more than 3 million views on his Facebook page and has been shared by celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, by dropping a piece of paper with "MIC" written on it -- simulating a "mic drop," common in pop culture.
"Invest at least a year in search before doing such a dumb video like this," commented Arlene Ivette on Facebook.
"I like how people are dismissing this kid just because he's a kid. Some kids are smarter than adults, age doesn't have much to do with it," writes Zacharia Lawrence on Facebook. "That said, he's still totally right."
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