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A study published in the late 1990s suggested the measles vaccine was linked to autism, but the author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was found to have falsified data to advance his claims. Wakefield lost his medical licence and the British journal that published the study, the Lancet, retracted it.

The skepticism borne out of the study has been kept alive by countless websites making claims and by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, who claims vaccines can cause autism in children.

“The issue is, that fear has been instilled in parents,” said Shannon MacDonald, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Calgary’s faculty of medicine who studies vaccine uptake and parental acceptance.

“If you understand the background of it, that a study of 12 children with fraudulent data has been counteracted by multiple studies with 14 million children, that sounds obvious. But that’s not the message that people hear.”

The Mainstreet survey suggests roughly one in three Albertans believe schools and child care facilities should welcome unvaccinated youngsters. A majority of those polled disagree.

Fifty-three per cent of respondents said schools should refuse unvaccinated children, compared to 36 per cent who held an opposing view.

When the question turned to child care facilities, the results were similar. Fifty-eight per cent said unvaccinated children shouldn’t be allowed, with 31 per cent disagreeing.

A majority of those polled — 56 per cent — said parents should be able to decide against vaccinating their children, but 34 per cent said this shouldn’t be the case.