Autism-Vax Doc Scandal Was Pharma Business Scam

Sockatume writes "In his second report, Brian Deer exposes how MMR-autism prophet Andrew Wakefield aimed to profit from the vaccine scare. Two years before the research that 'discovered' the MMR-autism link, Wakefield began courting interest in a hundred-million-dollar diagnostics firm. The doctor hoped to seed the company with government legal aid money and profit by charging 'premium prices' for new diagnostic tests to be used in vaccine injury lawsuits. By the time Wakefield published, the proposals had expanded into producing new 'safe' vaccines, two businesses to gather legal aid funding, and interest from partners including Wakefield's own hospital. The scheme ultimately disintegrated with the arrival of new leadership at Wakefield's hospital and ongoing scrutiny into his research."

Comments

This is a Big Deal

[microTodd]

Being a new parent right around the height of the Autism/Vaccination scare, this is a Big Deal. This was huge! We had lots of talking heads on TV telling people not to vaccinate their kids. Famously, Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah and told parents not to vaccinate their kids. Many doctors and parents LISTENED! If you read the articles, you'll see that as a result children died of easily preventable childhood diseases because parents were too scared to get the proper vaccinations.

I am frankly amazed that this turned out to be a scam and not just sloppy science research. I just cannot fathom the depths of this man's conscience.

The sad part is, the repercussions will continue to last for years and years. Even after this has all been revealed as malicious, willful fraud, I bet dollars to doughnuts that many parents will still believe it, and won't get their kids vaccinations, putting them at risk.

I'm normally a laid back guy but this one just makes me fired up.

Re:This is a Big Deal

[argStyopa]

It should make you fired up, but in a different way.

Look at what you said: Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah and told parents not to vaccinate their kids.
So...Jenny McCarthy (famous for her diagnostic research?) went on Oprah (famous for its rigorous, investigative journalism?) and told people not to get a procedure that had been not just recommended but nearly mandatory for what, 40 years?
And on THAT basis, they didn't?

Sorry, but dude, if people are THAT gullible and witless that they trust their child's LIFE to the pronouncements of Jenny McCarthy and Oprah....well, they probably were going to have trouble making it across the street alive too.

I'm sorry to sound so cynical, but at what point are people required to perform a little due diligence on their own lives? I mean, sure, we're not all epidemiologists or vaccine researchers, we can't all parse the raw data for results. But there are experts you CAN turn to (your family doctor, for one) for advice, and I don't know many of them basing their counsel on Oprah. And if you as a self-aware actor make the choice to disregard experts, that IS your choice. And the results - good or bad - are your fault. Sometimes, I'm sure, you'll be right. That would make your choice evolutionarily right, congrats.

Usually, however, I'd guess that you'd be wrong.

Looking at it objectively, one could say it was a 2nd-order Darwin effect. It's a bitch when it happens to be you though.

Re:This is a Big Deal

[slimjim8094]

I'd completely agree with you, but these idiots aren't hurting themselves. They're hurting their (very young, infant) children. The kids aren't the ones saying "but I heard oprah", it's the parents.

It's the same thing as the homeopathy nonsense. My mother has a friend whose kid had Lyme disease, but she thought the treatment was too harsh and turned to homeopathic treatment (saline and sugar pills). He got better! He only a few neurologic defecits that held him back a year in school and changed his personality. So, heretic me looks up what the symptoms of not treating Lyme disease... and sees something familiar. The poor kid suffered for years and is damaged for life because his mom is a dumb bitch - is that "her" problem, or his?

I would fully support those people getting prosecuted for child abuse. People are allowed to be as stupid about their own health as they want, but not about their kids. Otherwise, they should be removed and placed in the care of people who will treat them properly - same as we do with other neglect.

Damage is already done

[bsDaemon]

There are so many parents who believed (the media interpretation of) the first study that they kept their kids from getting vaccinated. As a result, it has been more common to see childhood illnesses which had been virtual eradicated with the help of vaccination, particularly measles, as well as some other more dangerous diseases. Lives have been put at risk because this guy gambled (correctly) that new parents are easy to freak out and take advantage of. Now there is the daunting task of convincing those same parents, who aren't going to want to admit they were basically taken in a huge scam and put their kids at risk because they were dumb, which means a large number of people are going to convince themselves the retraction is a scam/conspiracy/etc and that the original study was right.

Is there a degree of felony high enough to cover this?

Re:Noooooooooo!!!!!!1111!11!

[Moryath]

I submit your son's troubles are directly causally related to exposure to you. After all, his condition declines with exposure to you.

Facetious? Yes. At the same time, people are very good at convincing themselves that they understand the "cause" of something even when they don't. This is how superstitions are born. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is called a logical fallacy for a reason, yet for some reason there's a sizable, possibly majority, portion of the population that simply cannot grasp the difference between correlation, causation, and just plain coincidence.

Re:Heh

[gmuslera]

The worst problem is that it don't ends now. For years (centuries?) from now people will refuse to vaccine kids because "i hear somewhere that it causes autism", that kind of lies, misunderstandings and myths are documented that remain for very long, no matter what science says loudy all around (like some few examples that came to light recently)

Re:Heh

[MogNuts]

No. Thank Jenny McCarthy for that. And Oprah.

Oprah has done a lot of good, so she gets a pass. But again a reason that celebrities should just shut up and do their job, because almost 100% in any other aspect of life, they're idiots.

Re:Blame to go around.

[Myopic]

But... but.. but... she has "mommy intuition"! How could "medical science" ever trump that?

OMG save the children

[sjbe]

Should we not spare 40% of children from DYING so that 1% doesn't get autism. That is easily worth the trade off.

Try saying that when it's your child, asshole.

Ok. Saving the lives of 40% of children is worth the risk of giving 1% of them autism including my own child. Easily worth the trade off. Your child isn't any more special than anyone else. Neither are any children of mine.

Some people are just going to be unlucky. Taking stupid risks like not vaccinating because someone hypothesizes (fraudulently as it turns out) that there might be a link between a particular vaccine and autism merely trades a theoretical risk for another well established risk. Don't get vaccinated and you might not get measles or mumps but some percentage of the population absolutely will. It's a roll of the dice. Taking a hypothetical risk over a well proven one is retarded.

Vaccines save lives. This is not in dispute. EVERY vaccine has side effects in at least some portion of the population. So does every medicine and medical treatment known to man. Unproven side effects in a few are not sufficient reason to not use a medication and certainly not reason to not be vaccinated.

Re:Heh

[Slashdot Parent]

How did Josh get Autism? I don't know. Did he have Autism? Don't know that either. Did he have heavy metal poisoning? If you look up the symptoms you'll see they are quite similar.

As a parent of a kid who was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, I have to say that there is a huge problem right now with overdiagnosing Autism. I can't really say I blame the behavioral health people--it's just that a lot of different issues tend to present like Autism in little kids.

At around age 1, my son was a mess. He had these routines that he'd do over and over and over again, and if you interrupted him, he'd scream for 2 hours. He couldn't talk, wouldn't make eye contact, didn't interact at all with anyone. He was developmentally delayed in every area that they measure. We brought him to a behavioral specialist who said that he was too young to know for sure, but that in a few years, we should plan on him being diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. She said that there was definitely evidence to support that diagnosis at the time, but that she prefers not to label kids that young.

My wife and I did a ton of research on Autism and anything else we could find. I was reading some stupid article on curing Autism by changing the kid's diet when it hit me: as an infant, my son was allergic to dairy. He was shitting blood, vomiting, etc., but he got over it at about age 6mos. Anyway, we called his pediatrician and asked if we'd be nuts to take him off of dairy, and he said that taking him off of dairy for a few months would actually be a great idea.

So we took him off of dairy, and lo and behold, he was cured. He was a different kid. Engaging, charismatic. The routines disappeared. He started to develop. Obviously, he wasn't Autistic at all. He was just still allergic to dairy, and he was in excruciating pain, which inhibited his development.

So I think there are a lot of "Autistic" kids out there who are suffering needlessly due to their actual condition remaining undiagnosed. I really wish doctors just send every developmentally-delayed kid to a behavioral specialist. An allergist should always be consulted, IMHO.