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Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud'
Charliemopps writes "An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was 'no doubt' Wakefield was responsible."
Sadly, there's a lot of money in junk science.
People are still going to ignore all the retractions from the real medical and scientific community in favor of Jenny McCarthy saying on TV that "Vaccines gave my baby autism!"
This has grown beyond Wakefield now. It's become a self-sustaining conspiracy theory, independant of it's source, and no mere facts are going to even slow it down. Parents want to worry, it's in their instincts to protect their children - if they can find no real dangers, they'll inflate anything that looks remotely threatening regardless of true risk.
It's a sad world when some money-grubbing fool can publish a fudged article claiming that a vital, lifesaving tool can cause horrible, debilitating disease, get international attention, and when he's finally disproven all the "concerned parents" of the world ignore him because The Man wants to keep their kids autistic, without sparing a thought to the possiblity that maybe The Other Man just wanted a quick buck.
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Everyone knows how conspiracy theories work. All the wingnuts will just claim this is a political chop job designed to cover up Big Brother/Big Pharma's Big Evil plan. The BBC could play video next week of Wakefield snorting coke and doing an underage hooker, all the while shouting that he had falsified his results, and it wouldn't matter. At some point they'd probably decide that Wakefield was a deep-cover government plant intended to discredit the movement.
Why is this making the news now?
Because this not only debunks the study (which has been debunked for a few years now), it proves Wakefield manufactured the entire thing. He altered data, misrepresenting each case -- for instance, while Wakefield claimed none of the subjects exhibited signs of autism, medical records show that 5 of the 12 had already been shown to have autism. Further investigation shows that all twelve cases had been misrepresented to various degrees.
Also, Wakefield misrepresented the study to the doctors from whom he received referrals. He called it a "clinical trial," not a study.
Basically, this investigation proves that Wakefield was not simply careless; he intentionally fictionalized the entire study.
We can no longer attribute to incompetency that which is demonstrably malicious.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The mortality of measles is about 0.3% - 3 kids in 1000 that contract it will die. Your sample size simply means nothing. That's why you leave epidemiology to the experts and don't recklessly endanger not only your kids but everyone they come in contact with by refusing vaccination. In my opinion, it should simply be mandated by law. Parents refusing to vaccinate are clearly unfit for their role, their kids are better off if their asshat parents get thrown into the slammer and the kids set up for adoption.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Thimerosal is not mercury. It is a compound with mercury in it with low bioavailabity.
That's like not eating salt because you're afraid of the chlorine molecule it contains.
There are countless pages out there discussing the dangers of chlorine, that doesn't make salt a hyper-deadly toxin.
Trolling is a art,
So a completely different vaccine has the same effect: autism! I have another explanation that is much more plausible: people who tend to believe in wild conspiracy theories have a 3 times higher risk of having children with autism.
How about I piss in your cornflakes? What's the problem it's not piss it just has a small amount of piss in it.
If you were to bind the piss with the cornflakes and create a new, safe and tasty molecule then I would try it.
They drink recycled urine on the space station, btw.
Trolling is a art,
Chiropractors are not medical doctors. You may want to point out that fact to him.
Trolling is a art,
Sadly, there's even bigger money in Big Pharma.
Okay. Let's look at this clearly: Big Pharma is a mixed bag of positive and negative. They have undeniably provided products of great benefit to human health. And there is also undeniably many cases of them providing unnecessary vanity products, unintentionally harmful products, and products they knew were harmful or useless which they skewed data to get approved. I have lots of problems with Big Pfizer^H^H^H^H^Hharma.
Junk science is not a mixed bag. At best it causes people to get ripped off buying placebos, and at worst causes significant harm by making people not seek real medical treatment when they need it, or not vaccinate their kids so you get outbreaks of measels or whooping cough that affect not just their children, but the children of people who didn't buy into the junk science.
Please let us not talk about these things as if they are equal. There should be lots of money in legitimate pharmaceutical research and manufacturing, but we should also push to solve the problems with it. The problem with junk science, homeopathy, anti-vaccination movements, etc is the junk science itself.
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