Post offers up misinformation about viruses, longevity and autism for Amish | Fact check

The claim: Amish people live longer, do not have autism, never faced a disease outbreak

A Nov. 28 Threads post (direct link, archive link) makes sweeping claims about the health of Amish people compared to other Americans.

“Amish people have a longer life expectancy than regular people and they only drink raw milk,” reads the post. “They don’t get vaccinated either. There has (sic) never been outbreaks of any kind of pathogens in their communities. They also have no cases of autism.”

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Our rating: False

All of the claims are either false or unproven. There are records of virus outbreaks and autism in Amish communities. There is no data showing Amish people live longer as a group. They also do not universally oppose vaccines nor do they all only drink raw milk.

Generalizations about Amish health create harmful misinformation, stereotypes

Most of the claims in the social media post are easily disproven by publicly available research, and all are based on the inaccurate idea that certain practices are universal across all Amish communities.

“When people talk about what ‘the Amish’ do to achieve health, they tend to apply certain positive-seeming traits across ‘the Amish’ as a whole,” Erik Wesner, the author of multiple books on Amish communities and operator of the website Amish America, told USA TODAY. “This is how ‘the Amish’ do things.’ But with close to 700 different communities, there is a lot of variety within Amish society. They also tend to ignore any negatives within the Amish.”

The claim of no pathogen outbreaks is false as demonstrated in multiple reports. USA TODAY previously explained how COVID-19 was spreading in Amish communities, while researchers have documented other outbreaks across the country in various Amish communities. These include certified cases of measles in Ohio, polio in Minnesota, pertussis in Delaware and rubella in Pennsylvania.

The ailments documented in the journals are all vaccine-preventable diseases, with shots on the recommended schedules provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Wesner said Amish people are not universally opposed to vaccines, but they are under-vaccinated as a group and, as such, more susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases. A 2017 study of Penn State Children’s Hospital’s medical records shows Amish children were hospitalized for vaccine-preventable diseases at twice the rate of other children.

Fact check: No, there aren’t 180,000 new Amish voters in Pennsylvania

The autism claim is also demonstrably false, as USA TODAY previously reported on the existence of autism in Amish communities. The condition was documented in 2009 and 2010 studies. Anti-vaccine advocates often insist there is a link between vaccines and autism, a claim USA TODAY has also debunked.

There’s no evidence supporting the claim of greater longevity for Amish people as a whole, either. Because of the different habits and ancestry of the separate Amish communities, research on all Amish people is hard to locate. A 2001 study found that one Amish community in northern Indiana had an average life expectancy of about 71 years, short of the national average of 74 years for men and nearly 80 years for women that same year.

Researchers did find a genetic mutation in that Amish community that slowed down biological aging, pushing life expectancy to 85 for some people in that community. But there is no evidence the mutation is linked to the consumption of raw milk or the avoidance of vaccines.

Wesner said it is unwise to make sweeping generalizations about Amish people because different communities often have distinct backgrounds and practices. The northern Indiana community where the mutation was found had largely Swiss ancestry, but many Amish people are of German or French ancestry.

The post’s claim of universal consumption of raw milk is also unproven. Hard data on the consumption of raw milk in Amish communities was not readily available, but Wesner – whose books and website are informed by his travel to Amish communities throughout the U.S. – said he is aware of Amish people buying pasteurized milk in grocery stores, even if it was out of necessity because of a lack of access to raw milk from farmers in the community. Raw milk is controversial because bacteria killed in pasteurization can be found in it.

USA TODAY could not reach the social media user who shared the claim for comment.

Our fact-check sources

• Erik Wesner, Dec. 4, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• Vaccine, Feb. 12, 2021, Vaccination patterns of the northeast Ohio Amish revisited
• Delaware Journal of Public Health, May 28, 2019, Pertussis outbreak in an Amish Community: Kent County, Delaware, 2018
• New England Journal of Medicine, Oct. 16, 2016, A Measles Outbreak in an Underimmunized Amish Community in Ohio
• Pediatrics, July 1, 2011, Underimmunization in Ohio’s Amish: Parental Fears Are a Greater Obstacle Than Access to Care
• International Society of Autism Research, May 22, 2010, Prevalence Rates of Autism Spectrum Disorders Among the Old Order Amish
• Pediatric Neurology, April 2009, Gene associated with seizures, autism, and hepatomegaly in an Amish girl
• The Lancet, December 2005, Poliomyelitis outbreak among Amish children in the USA
• American Journal of Medical Genetics, Sept. 1, 2001, Heritability of life span in the Old Order Amish
• American Academy of Pediatrics, Aug. 2, 2017, Study: Low vaccination rate in Amish children linked to hospitalization
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reviewed June 7, 2006, QuickStats: Life Expectancy at Birth, by Sex — Selected Countries, 2001
• CDC, July 3, 1992, Congenital Rubella Syndrome Among the Amish — Pennsylvania, 1991-1992
• Amish Studies, accessed Dec. 4, Amish Origins
• Northwestern University, Nov. 15, 2017, Amish Longevity May Be Due to Genetic ‘Fountain of Youth’
• USA TODAY, July 24, 2023, Yes, there are cases of Amish children with autism, cancer and diabetes | Fact check
• USA TODAY, Feb. 10, 2021, Fact check: Amish communities have been affected by COVID-19 pandemic

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