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Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud'

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the someone-alert-jenny-mccarthy dept.

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."

3 of 813 comments (clear)

  1. Jenny McCarthy's page already has it's rebuttal. by whoda · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www.generationrescure.org/ already has it's rebuttal, including a NEW study which shows a link between Hepatitis-B shots and a 3 times higher risk of autism.

    When will they stop?

  2. Re:There's a special place in hell for... by geekoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can blame Oprah for that. She is directly responsible for giving a platform to this nonsense.

    She is an accomplice. Because of her platform, children are dead.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  3. Re:I wish it weren't true, but by Solandri · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hell, removal of perfectly safe asbestos these days actually requires a team of hazmat workers, following hazmat procedures.

    Here's my story relating to that. We were renovating a building built in the early 1900s and tore out the floor tiles from a room and threw them away them in our dumpster. The driver from our trash company came to pick up the dumpster, saw the tiles, and refused to take the dumpster. He said those types of tiles frequently have asbestos and the trash company wasn't legally licensed to deal with it.

    So I took one of the tiles out of the trash, and sent it to a lab to have it analyzed. The tile wasn't asbestos, the adhesive didn't have asbestos, but it did have a fireproofing layer in between them which had asbestos. The refuse company wouldn't touch it, so we had to hire a full-blown asbestos removal company to deal with it. For $12,000 they tented the entrance to the building in plastic, taped up all the windows, and set up filtered fans to create back-pressure so any airborne asbestos would be caught by the filters. A dozen guys dressed in full hazmat suits and masks went in, broke up the floor tiles with sledgehammers, and carried out the pieces in double-wrapped heavy-duty plastic bags. Overall they carted out a couple hundred pounds of tile, and probably two dumpster-loads of plastic, tape, and used hazmat suits.

    All for asbestos which was literally sealed between rock and glue. The whole thing struck me as a huge over-reaction to the scope of the problem. If the stuff was dangerous enough to warrant that level of precaution, everyone who was alive during the years when it was widely used should've died of lung cancer while they were young.