These are the facts behind the worries.

It's natural for new parents to have questions about what they put into their baby's body, including vaccines.

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We talked to Dr. Kate O'Brien, pediatric infectious disease specialist and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Dr. Jon Abramson, professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Both doctors are members of the World Health Organization's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, and really know their stuff. Here's what they had to say.

In a word, no. The idea that vaccines were linked to autism came from a research paper published in a prominent scientific journal. But it turns out that the research was completely wrong — the study author, Andrew Wakefield, actually falsified his data (meaning, he made it up). The paper was retracted, and Wakefield lost his license (see more on that here). Abramson says that research shows absolutely no link between vaccines and autism.

First, regarding mercury in vaccines causing autism: "The answer is unequivocally no," says Abramson, who adds that many studies have confirmed this.

But something else worth mentioning: Most vaccines don't contain mercury anymore, anyway. The measles vaccine doesn't, for instance. "There's a little bit of mercury in some flu vaccines — the ones made by egg," Abramson says. But even those vaccines contain incredibly small amounts of mercury that aren't harmful to you, he says. See more about the different types of flu vaccines here, if you want some more information.

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