The Lancet Recants Study Linking Autism To Vaccine

JamJam writes "The Lancet, a major British medical journal, has retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease. British surgeon and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues originally released their study in 1998. Since then 10 of Wakefield's 13 co-authors have renounced the study's conclusions and The Lancet has said it should never have published the research. Wakefield now faces being stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain. The vaccine-autism debate should now end."

Comments

Not much of a debate...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when it's scientists debating fat midwestern housewives whose "evidence" is nothing more than sad anecdotal stories. Fucking retards holding back progress.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[dryeo]

Still when your child loses the capability of speech and starts acting much different within days of getting a shot it does seem like causation.
In my case, the last time my son called me Dad was on the way to the Doctor for a shot. 12 years later he still hasn't called me Dad.
I've also seen too many supposed scientific studies that turned out not as scientific as the studies claimed. Usually these are studies done by people or organizations with an agenda.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[fluffy99]

But the large volume of anecdotal evidence should be enough to get the vaccine manufacturers to consider stopping the use of thimerasol as the preservative. Perticularly when there are other alternative preservatives that are not under suspicion. The FDA has yanked drugs off the market with far, far less circumstantial evidence. It certainly raises a red flag for me when you consider that a single vaccine can give a child an exposure 5-10x the OSHA limit for mercury poisoning.

It's quite likely that some small percentage of people are unusually sensitive to mercury, and a large dose can trigger autism in them. We've certainly seen lots of cases of unusual allergies in people that are not present in the general population.

Also, consider that we are far more eager to diagnose autism and put a label on kids as its the only way to get help from the state. 30 years ago, we'd just call Johnny a lottle slow. Nowadays, he's ADHD, autistic, aspergers, something or other.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[dryeo]

Still when your child starts acting weird, and stops talking within days after getting a shot it is easy to draw a conclusion.

"For every problem, there is an answer that is simple, obvious, and wrong."

Which logically means the above is wrong. Which logically proves the above is right.
Seems your statement leads to infinite recursion.