Times: UK doctor who showed autism-vaccine link altered his data

Last week the UK's General Medical Council found Wakefield to have broken ethical and professional guidelines.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23800261-doctor-behind-mmr-jab-panic-failed-in-his-duties.do

Wow. Stupidest typo ever, self. Good going, self. My fail is epic.

 

Yeah, thanks for bringing back measles to this landmass, which was once thought to be an elimnated disease.

 

Sadly, the Jenny McCarthys, Suzanne Somers and Dan Burtons of the world are not going to change their tune over this. The vaccines = autism meme is so deep it's going to take a mass measles or polio outbreak to change minds.

On the other hand, my heart breaks for struggling parents with autistic children who are now deep in the woods again trying to figure out why this happened after grabbing onto to vaccines as an explanation.

 

McCarthy: "I'm really, really sorry! Maybe my son wasn't autistic and it was something else! It wasn't the vaccines!"

http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2010/02/26/jenny-mccarthy-says-her-son-evan-never-had-autism/

 

Mods, I posted a thread about Jenny McCarthy on Anything Goes. Feel free to delete and/or merge.

 

He switched the samples.

 

British Medical Journal steps up the investigation and calls the flawed study an intentional fraud:

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/autism/2011-01-06-autism06_ST_N.htm

 

My company inadvertently got caught in the middle of this debate late last year. The level of intensity and hatred on both sides is astounding. Even two months later I'm still being harassed by an "anti-vacciner" who found my personal Twitter account.

I'm pretty sure the people I dealt with, who believe vaccines cause autism, will never, ever change their tune. No amount of information from the licensed medial community will convince them there is no link between autism and vaccines. In most cases, these are parents of children with autism and are desperately seeking answers. They rely on anecdotal stories and discredited studies as their guide. Even after yesterday's news, that side is preaching the facts that continue to be proven (or in this case, disproved) are a result of the pharmaceutical industry flexing its massive political/financial muscle.

That said, the other side (pro-vaccine, Skeptics, whatever) I dealt with refuse to acknowledge - and do their best to refuse to let anyone else acknowledge publicly - there's even a chance injecting mercury into your body can be harmful. Their point of view seems to be that by even acknowledging mercury is a toxin, we run the risk of turning people off to vaccination completely. I guess if I have to make a choice, this side seems more logical, and there's no way in hell I'd let my child go unvaccinated, but I came away from the experience feeling pretty disgusted with both groups.

 

Great post.

Our Doc just cautioned against getting too many shots in one day. Stick to the schedule they give you and don't blow off two appoinments and try to get three sessions worth at once.

Our Doc also said she spots a FLK the second they are brought in no matter what the age. The shots do not make them a FLK, it's just that you usually figure out why they are an FLK after the shots have been given, so the shots must have been the reason.

 

When scientific evidence disproves their most deeply-held beliefs, most people do the logical thing: reject science.

 

Examples? Most pro-vaxers I've read are aware and up front about mercury being a toxin. They're also up front about there being more mercury in a tuna sammich than in a vaccine shot.

Worthwhile reads:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/05/breaking-bmj-calls-andrew-wakefield-a-fraud/
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full