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Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu shared a post on X suggesting a connection between childhood vaccines and rising autism cases in India. The claim is FALSE.ClaimSridhar Vembu posted on X implying that childhood vaccinations are linked to an increase in autism cases in India. In his post, he writes, "To understand why medicine is so complex, let's make a crude simplifying assumption that there are only 100 biomarkers that are important (in reality there are vastly more). Let's also crudely assume each market is allowed only two values. That gives us 2^100 possibilities, which is about 10^30. That is vastly more than humans that ever lived. And this is with the extremely over-simplified model. We face a practical infinity of possibilities.In reality, no two patients are ever really alike. No statistical model can give you very high confidence on how to treat. That is why AI can never treat patients, because human doctors exercise something called "clinical judgment".That judgment is what enables a doctor to tell us "this is not a serious issue, get good sleep" vs "this definitely needs deeper investigation". That judgment is hard. Often they cannot even explain why they arrived at this but great doctors have that intuition. The entire Big Medicine is about systematically dismantling clinical judgment and convert doctors to mere "protocol pushers". Great doctors resist this.Now on top of the measurable biomarkers, there is the unmeasurable factor called "mental state". Every good doctor knows a positive mental state in a patient leads to far better clinical outcomes. That is why good doctors practise compassionate medicine, not just numbers based medicine. I know an outstanding skin doctor in Chennai who prescribed me medicine for my very-itchy Eczema that I had endured for months, and he also told me "try to avoid stress and it may go away, and you may not even need the medicines I prescribed". I consciously reduced my stress level and the problem went away without medicine. That is a truly great doctor.What does it have to do with autism-vaccine connection? As my crude numerical analysis showed, we have the problem of N=1 way too often in medicine and that is even more true for autism where each kid is truly unique, and that is why statistics are mostly useless and clinical judgment is mostly all we have. We cannot have broad sweeping mandates, definitely not broad vaccine mandates. Each doctor has to exercise their judgment with their patient. And they have to listen to the patient concerns first.What Big Medicine is about is to try to reduce medicine to be a pure statistical science and it is not. Conditions like autism do not fit that paradigm at all. That is the battle here. At its core it is not just an autism battle, it is a philosophy of medicine battle.I pledge to keep fighting this fight because I nearly wanted to commit suicide at one one point in my life. Just this morning, a depressed parent approached me for advice and that started my X thread today"The post has 265.9K views and can be accessed here.Fact CheckThe claim is FALSE. There is no scientific evidence or medical consensus to back the claim by the user. What is Autism?Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), encompasses a wide range of developmental conditions marked by difficulties in social interaction, communication both verbal and nonverbal and the presence of repetitive behaviors. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that autism currently affects about 1 in 36 children and 1 in 45 adults in the United States.Are Vaccinations Important?According to the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccines are one of the most important and effective tools for protecting global health. They strengthen the body’s natural immune system by triggering an immune response that helps reduce the risk of infection. Vaccination currently safeguards people against more than 20 potentially life-threatening diseases, leading to longer and healthier lives for people of all ages. WHO emphasizes that immunization prevents 3.5 to 5 million deaths each year from illnesses such as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, influenza, and measles—making vaccines an essential part of public health worldwide.Is there a link between vaccinations and the increasing number of autism cases?Sridhar Vembu recently shared a post on X urging parents to take seriously a disputed study that claimed a link between childhood vaccinations and autism spectrum disorder. He stated, "I believe there is increasing evidence that we are giving way too many vaccines to very young children. This is spreading in India too and we are seeing a rapid increase in autism in India,"However, there is no scientific evidence or medical consensus for Vembu’s claim. Extensive research and global medical consensus have consistently shown that vaccination schedules are not linked to autism. On the contrary, the World Health Organization (WHO) stresses that vaccines are vital for safeguarding...
