Slashdot Mirror
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."
Now, I know RISC is cool these days and the VAX was pretty much the embodiment of CISC, but calling it autistic is a bit uncalled for.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
...I don't think that's egg.
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.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
"You know what I can't figure out? How is it that all these stupid neanderthal mafia guys can be so good at crime, and smart guys like us can suck so badly at it."
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?
The problem here is, Wakefield's scam has actually caused the death of hundreds of kids and caused thousands of others to get sick with completely preventable illnesses.
He's personally responsible for causing outbreaks of diseases which were all but eradicated to spring back up as enough stupid parents followed the lead of batshit-insane people to break down what we call "herd immunity", which is also what we rely on to protect the small number of people in society who don't get vaccinations for "religious" reasons or because they have a demonstrable allergy to one of the vaccine components.
Further, the "debate" over this has increased distrust of doctors, which isn't helpful. We already have enough problems with hypochondriacs who should have their WebMD access taken away because they are constantly convinced they are "special" people with some rare, exotic illness rather than a garden-variety head cold.
Hi, speaking on behalf of the medical field, we've known a bunch of this for years. Which is why the accusations from the Anti-Vax mob about "Pushing Poison" on behalf of "Big Pharma" was so infuriating. This asshole lied about MMR and other vaccines because he was pushing his own vaccine. He's done incalculable harm, for his OWN profit, and his supporters accused *us* of being immoral profit slaves.
And this includes all you soft-spined assholes who would take the stance of "Well, I'm not saying they're right, but maybe they have something, there are a lot of concerns right? What harm is there to letting the parents decide if they're uncomfortable?"
Hope the truth burns, folks.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, nice fallacy.
There is one issue I have had since the beginning.
Assume it were true.
Assume all the autism is caused by vaccination (it can't be worse than that).
The autism percentage in the US in 2007 was 0.7%.
The chance a kid dies from diseases he could have been vaccinated against is higher, dunno the exact number and am to lazy to look'em up.
So these people think it's worse to have a kid with autism than to lose your child to a disease? Are these people insane?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
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.
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)
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.
She's STILL DOING IT! She still says the same thing. Article in Huffington Post, dated TWO DAYS AGO:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-mccarthy/vaccine-autism-debate_b_806857.html
I know children regress after vaccination because it happened to my own son. Why aren't there any tests out there on the safety of how vaccines are administered in the real world, six at a time? Why have only 2 of the 36 shots our kids receive been looked at for their relationship to autism? Why hasn't anyone ever studied completely non-vaccinated children to understand their autism rate?
These missing safety studies are causing many parents to approach vaccines with moderation. Why do other first world countries give children so many fewer vaccines than we do? What if a parent used the vaccine schedule of Denmark, Norway, Japan or Finland -- countries that give one-third the shots we do (12 shots vs. 36 in the U.S.)? Vaccines save lives, but might be harming some children -- is moderation such a terrible idea?
This debate won't end because of one dubious reporter's allegations. I have never met stronger women than the moms of children with autism. Last week, this hoopla made us a little stronger, and even more determined to fight for the truth about what's happening to our kids.
Amazing.
The thrust of arguments seems to be that he intended fraud and a quick buck right from the start, or that he has been slandered and all will come out as he claimed once the dust settles.
But a more likely scenario is that he was convinced of the link between MMR and autism from the very early preliminary studies, so much so that he reached out for financial support and to the lawyers, expecting to not only prevent autism cases, but secondarily to make a buck from the evil pharma in the course of making them pay for their dastardly greedy mistakes. Revenge is all the sweeter when the revengee has to pay you for their mistake.
And in the end, so addicted was he to that end and his premature conclusion, that he deluded himself past the point where he could ever admit he had been wrong. When his data came out incompatible with his preconceived notion, he did not take a deep breath, count to ten, and reconsider his original position. He fudged the data to match his "reality" and passed the point of no return.
Yes, he deserves to be slapped around, but to say he planned this fraud right from the beginning is too facile an argument.
Infuriate left and right
I like the media. Everything is simple in the media. They can side with a certain viewpoint for a few years, implicitly calling everyone who doesn't agree, an idiot, selecting their guests and questions to only maintain the illusion of being neutral, while having a clear bias.
Then suddenly, something happens, new information becomes apparent and an endless stream of "it turns out that..." articles flood the public. Everything we proclaimed bad is now good, everything good, is now bad. Panic, people, for you were caught off guard again. The savior was the devil himself.
Media can repeatedly turn 180 on themselves and sell panic non-stop. They can even fabricate an issue where none exists, then as we recover, claim the opposite so we panic again. Really nice for ratings, and really suitable for pushing hidden agendas. Here's my world view: People's motives are complex. People's moral compass has more than two poles. Sometimes, good people becomes self deluded. Sometimes, bad people get things right. Sometimes, good studies fudge data, and sometimes, there is commercial interests behind a genuinely good cause.
Am I saying Andrew Wakefield was "right" and vaccines are "bad"? No. Am I saying get yourself all the vaccine shots, and all the seasonal flu ones, always because they are "good"? No. Because the world is just more complex than that. Some vaccines have helped us rid of serious conditions, and ultimately made and keep making the world a better place, while other are just peddled for profit with little or no scientific support behind them. I'm not going into details, because I'm not trying to sell you a certain viewpoint on this "scandal" as correct.
I'm only trying to bring recognition that in the media cycle we're in now, Wakefield is an evil incarnate who never even believed his own studies, who never ever had a honest thought in his life, and vaccines are as harmless as drinking purified water. You'll see one-sided "fact checks". You'll see journalist display clear dislike of Wakefield while pretending to interview him. You'll see them reiterate how wrong everyone always was.
Until the next cycle.
Did you ever give him steamed carrots? Like, the baby food with carrots in it? Or did you ever cook and mash up your own carrots? Or did your wife ever eat carrots and breastfeed your son? I don't want to cause undue alarm, but you need to search the web TODAY about carrots and developmental abnormalities. Seriously. Do it, and be careful with carrots until your child is at least in its teens.
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.
Wakefield is happily minting money in TX where he "manages" an alternative therapy clinic. He claims he isn't practicing medicine at all just "managing." He definitely should be back in the UK standing before a judge. gb
But... but.. but... she has "mommy intuition"! How could "medical science" ever trump that?
He made investments based on the result of a study before he performed it, cherry-picked study participants, and then falsified results.
This is the part of the whole thing I never understood. Even if we accept that vaccines increase the risk of Autism (which they don't), the problem they solve is much more serious. People die or get permanent life altering disabilities from the diseases we vaccinate against. To employ the very over the top rhetoric of the movement itself: "Don't these people understand that they're killing babies?!?!" Sure we don't have a lot of experience with most of these diseases, but that's precisely because we are nearly immune to them as a society. Remove the herd immunity and they go right back to killing people.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
As the parent of an autistic child I always thought this one was bullshit. I witnessed my sons development. My family was convinced it was a result of the vaccines. He was normal and suddenly he stopped all the babble. Started staring into space for long periods of time. I think I'm the only one who noticed it happening before the vaccines. Its like no one looked before that. At least now when someone tells me that was the cause I can at least tell them it was a scam.
Did he have heavy metal poisoning? If you look up the symptoms you'll see they are quite similar.
In order to get heavy metal poisoning from vaccines, you'd have to get vaccinated on the order of multiple times daily. There are much easier ways to get yourself an accumulation of toxic metals.
On the other hand, there's every chance Scott Shoemaker's kid was chewing on shitty chinese-made Cadmium-laced or lead-laced toys. Or chewing lead paint from the house's walls.
Blaming the vaccines is stupid.
It's not hyperbole. Pertussis has undergone a resurgence in the past several years, in part because some parents are not having their kids vaccinated for various worries (of which autism is only the most recent). Pertussis can kill kids.
What the heck are you talking about? Herd Immunity is the concept that as long as a significant amount of the 'herd' are immune to the disease, then the disease can't effectively spread which in practice helps the non-immune members of the herd as well.
This means that even though you don't take your vaccine for whatever reason, you're still safe as long as everyone else does.
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.
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.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
To think it has some cause effect relationship with dead bits of virii or proteins is asinine.
...to people that are educated enough to understand what autism is and how vaccines work. There are a lot of people that have not had the benefit of such an education, and lack some critical tools for pursuing their own research.
Not that we need to coddle people that are willfully ignorant, but I think that society has an obligation to provide all of its members with the information they need to make informed choices. When charismatic people willfully spread misinformation to push some personal agenda I think society has an obligation to push back.
Also, it doesn't help that we keep using the word 'Autism' to describe what is likely a very large spectrum of different disorders with potentially different causes.
but I think that society has an obligation to provide all of its members with the information they need to make informed choices
Jenny McCarthy has all the information she needs to make an informed choice. The problem is not a lack of information, the problem is that she's a brainless fuckwit.
No they won't because they have been discredited over and over. As for your own circumstances, as unfortunate as they may be, you confuse cause and effect.
My kids are coeliac. One was diagnosed in hospital, the other retrospectively (due to other issues and the positive diagnosis on his sister). I could as easily blame their condition on vaccines as you could for yours. After all, their problems started around the time they had vaccines right? But I don't. Their condition was always there and was exposed during their development because they started eating solids containing gluten.
The antivax movement has tried for a long time to claim that vaccines are harmful (autism being just one example of alleged harm) and has utterly failed to prove any link. That's even after Wakefield stirred up a hornet's nest that saw multiple attempts to reproduce his results. If there was evidence it would stand up to peer review and medical scrutiny. Anecdotes & personal testimonies don't count. Discredited studies don't count. The word of various quack doctors and institutes don't count.
Blogs such as Respectful Insolence spend a great deal of time picking through anti-vax claims and methodically squashing them. You would do well to read some of them. It's not a case of some massive big pharma conspiracy. It's a case of good evidence based medicine versus quackery and anecdotes.