What was claimed
There was no autism in Vietnam before 2001.
Our verdict
We can find no evidence to support this. Autism exists worldwide, but it was not recognised in Vietnam until the late 1990s. Some Vietnamese people born in the 20th century have autism.
What was claimed
Vaccines cause autism.
Our verdict
Vaccines are proven not to cause autism.
A post shared hundreds of times on Facebook, and liked more than 100,000 times on Instagram, falsely suggests that vaccines cause autism, and claims that there was no autism in Vietnam before the introduction of a vaccination programme supported by Bill Gates.
The post includes a video clip of a man who says there was “no such thing” as autism in Vietnam in 1975, 2000 or 2001, and that there’s been an “over 300% rise” since. A banner on the video says: “There was no such thing as autism in Vietnam until Bill Gates showed up there with his vaccine schedule.” This appears to have been added afterwards.
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Autism has been a recognised condition in Vietnam only since the late 1990s, but this does not mean that it didn’t exist in the country before that. Diagnosing people with autism requires resources and expertise that were not always available, and are still not equally available everywhere. Autism exists worldwide, although the WHO says: “The prevalence of autism in many low- and middle-income countries is unknown.”
The clip in this post seems to come from the end of a longer video [23m], which was once part of the Vaxxed YouTube channel, promoting the anti-vaccine documentary Vaxxed. It has since been archived by Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine campaign group founded by Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is the current US health secretary.
The man in the video, Dr Anthony Phan, offers no evidence for the claim that autism used not to exist in Vietnam, a country he says he left as a child in 1975. In its own fact check, AFP spoke to a professor, Dr Cong Tran, who works with autistic people in Vietnam, including some who would have developed it before Mr Gates’s foundation made its first donation to the GAVI vaccine fund, in 2000.
The causes of autism are still debated, but people’s genes are widely considered to be a significant factor. We have asked Dr Phan if he has any supporting evidence, and will update this fact check if he provides any.
The idea that vaccines cause autism is a common myth that has been proven false.
Many studies have found no association between autism and vaccines, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine say “Vaccines do not cause autism. Many scientists have studied this question, but no credible studies show that autism is caused by vaccines.”
The National Autistic Society says: “There is no link between autism and vaccines.”
While recorded cases of autism have become more common around the world, including in Vietnam, this may be the result of changing definitions, diagnosis and awareness of the condition rather than a rise in the underlying rate.
We can’t say with confidence how the underlying or recorded rates of autism have changed in Vietnam this century, but if there has been a rise in either, it has nothing to do with vaccines.
We do know that vaccination played a “central role” in a dramatic reduction in child mortality rates in Vietnam between 1990 and 2007.
Bad information can spread widely on social media and be harmful if people use it to make decisions about their health.
Full Fact approached the account behind this post, Nutrition with Tom and Lauren, for comment.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Vietnam only began to recognise autism in the late 1990s, and some Vietnamese people born in the 20th century have autism.
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