Autism scare a hoax

[billc]

On the radio tonight, a british investigaive reporter is stating that a British investigative panel has found that the Doctor linkin autism to innoculations fabricated everything. The reporter said he did it for money. I just caught the report, there should be more coming tomorrow.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2011/01/05/autism-vaccine.html?ref=rss

 

[Archangel M]

http://www.670kboi.com/rssItem.asp?feedid=116&itemid=29617756

(LONDON) – An article in the British Medical Journal has declared that a study that linked the MMR vaccine to autism was “an elaborate fraud” that may have led to the preventable disease and death of children.

 

[billc]

Wow, if a doctor would do something that awful for money, imagine if that were to happen in the debate on global warming...oh, too late.

 

[Big Don]

http://www.670kboi.com/rssItem.asp?feedid=116&itemid=29617756

I hope Jenny McCarthy feels as stupid as she is.

 

[Ken Morgan]

?? Dude, This is old news, he lost his medical license ages ago, lawsuits have been in the work for years.

The CBC??? You realize that you can't find a more leftwing Canadian source of information....right?

 

[granfire]

?? Dude, This is old news, he lost his medical license ages ago, lawsuits have been in the work for years.

The CBC??? You realize that you can't find a more leftwing Canadian source of information....right?

shhhh, don't tell him! He thinks it's the ultra far right!!!

 

[Tez3]

?? Dude, This is old news, he lost his medical license ages ago, lawsuits have been in the work for years.

The CBC??? You realize that you can't find a more leftwing Canadian source of information....right?

This is indeed a very old story.

 

[Blade96]

Its possible Bill. Fact is nobody knows for sure what 'causes' autism.

 

[Tez3]

To be fair to the doctors supporters supporters and those who trusted his results, he was aresearchdoctor and had published his result in a respected journal. It's he shame not his supporters who I guess are left very upset and looking for answers.
It may have also set back research into any link between the vaccines and autism by severals years, because of him there could be a link and now we'll not know it. He's done a lot of harm.

 

[Archangel M]

You don't stop vaccinating children, a long known disease preventative, because they MIGHT..possibly...who knows...cause autism. Especially when the idea was propagated by a quack.

 

[Tez3]

You don't stop vaccinating children, a long known disease preventative, because they MIGHT..possibly...who knows...cause autism. Especially when the idea was propagated by a quack.

Trouble is they didn't find out until it was too late that he wasn't telling the truth.
Long before this and we are talking over 30 years ago, I was told not to give my children the whooping cough vaccine because their father had hayfever, this was by the doctors. the vaccine didn't stop children getting whooping cough though, they still got it though just not quite as seriously. I hope things have moved on a bit since.
It was the triple vaccine that caused concern and which he was blaming, you could have the vaccinations done separately even he didn't claim anything wrong with them, it was the mixing of the vaccines that he said were the problem.

 

[crushing]

This is huge news in the USA media right now. If it is old news, why did this story blow up yesterday? Was there a press release by Big Pharma to the networks to get the word out?

EDIT:
An interview with the "quack".
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/smith-scott8.1.1.html
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Dr. Andrew Wakefield: The Autism study was a simple case series of 12 children and all it did was to tell the parents story of what they told us. It was to document the pinnacle findings in the children. Further research was needed into causes of autism.[/FONT]

It looks like the media and others have been reading more in to this simple case study than the Doctor wrote and they are claiming he came to conclusions that he never did. In the same article he says he is not anti-vaccine and that his own children were vaccinated. This quack is concerned that vaccines aren't properly vetted and they are pushed through without enough study.

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Daily Bell: We've already touched on it, but explain please in detail why the initial paper was disavowed by the Lancet?[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Dr. Andrew Wakefield: In the first instance, the Editor of the Lancet asked us to retract an interpretation of the paper. And that interpretation was that MMR vaccine was the cause of autism.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Daily Bell: But you didn't make this claim did you?[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Dr. Andrew Wakefield: No, the paper did not make that claim. It did not provide the interpretation that MMR vaccine is the cause of autism. However, it did raise the possibility that vaccines may be associated with autism. But you cannot retract a possibility. A possibility exists. It remains a possibility and therefore to retract it is illogical and was done purely as a political expedient.[/FONT]

Again and again he simply asks for further study. Apparently, based on comments on a CNN show last evening, there have been studies comparing the autism rates of vaccinated children with smaller levels of mercury to vacinated children with larger levels of mercury, but ZERO studies comparing the rates of autism rates among children that have not been vaccinated with children that have. To ask for further research seems to be all Dr. Wakefield is asking for. That is controversial? That gets a person marginalized?
[/FONT]

 

[Tez3]

This is huge news in the USA media right now. If it is old news, why did this story blow up yesterday? Was there a press release by Big Pharma to the networks to get the word out?

To be honest I've no idea, it's not on the news here. The article was written in 1998 and the controversy began in 2001, in 2004 the journalists reported on the hoax and discovered he wasdoing it for the money. In 2006 the GMC announced an inquiry into the doctor this took place early 2007. The doctor was struck off.

I think a book or article has been published about how the fraud was busted which may account for the publicity.

 

[cdunn]

In better news, we are getting closer, slowly closer to an understanding of autism. From memory, the essential understanding that we are reaching is that there is a complex series of events that have to occur in the brain at the cellular level for the mind to reach optimal function. There are a very large number of links in the chain of events, and any number of failures along the length of the chain can lead to symptoms along the autism spectrum. The vast variety of failure points leads to the spectrum nature of the disorder, rather than single discrete diseases. Unfortunately, at this time, treatments based on this knowledge would have to be individually tailored, and therefore inordinately difficult to create - but there is still the seed of hope inside it.

This should be the findings of the GMC in the Wakefield case - I can't check it right now, the company bars scribd, since not everything they host is happy with the filters.

And, a doctor's blog as he deconstructs the thing; links to the British Medical Journal articles are provided, along with many other links to both his own articles and other's articles following the scandal. While his primary specialty is cancer research and related surgery, his hobby is deconstructing 'alternative' medicine, and he brings the full of his experience at thorough research to the table. Read it with your own grain of salt, but I find him one of the better reads available.

 

[Steve]

You don't stop vaccinating children, a long known disease preventative, because they MIGHT..possibly...who knows...cause autism. Especially when the idea was propagated by a quack.

That's a perfect example of 20/20 hindsight.

 

[cdunn]

This is huge news in the USA media right now. If it is old news, why did this story blow up yesterday? Was there a press release by Big Pharma to the networks to get the word out?

EDIT:
An interview with the "quack".
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/smith-scott8.1.1.html


[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]It looks like the media and others have been reading more in to this simple case study than the Doctor wrote and they are claiming he came to conclusions that he never did. In the same article he says he is not anti-vaccine and that his own children were vaccinated. This quack is concerned that vaccines aren't properly vetted and they are pushed through without enough study.[/FONT]



[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Again and again he simply asks for further study. Apparently, based on comments on a CNN show last evening, there have been studies comparing the autism rates of vaccinated children with smaller levels of mercury to vacinated children with larger levels of mercury, but ZERO studies comparing the rates of autism rates among children that have not been vaccinated with children that have. To ask for further research seems to be all Dr. Wakefield is asking for. That is controversial? That gets a person marginalized?[/FONT]

Double post, but - Dr. Wakefield performed painful medical procedures on children without leading evidence of benefit, in order to make a personal monetary profit. New evidence has surfaced that he not only performed the experiments in flagrant violation of medical ethics, at least some of the data included in his paper is presented in distorted fashion or is an outright lie. His lies have led to literally thousands of people becoming infected with trivially prevented diseases, which can be lethal. He deserves marginalization, and more.

 

[crushing]

Double post, but - Dr. Wakefield performed painful medical procedures on children without leading evidence of benefit, in order to make a personal monetary profit. New evidence has surfaced that he not only performed the experiments in flagrant violation of medical ethics, at least some of the data included in his paper is presented in distorted fashion or is an outright lie. His lies have led to literally thousands of people becoming infected with trivially prevented diseases, which can be lethal. He deserves marginalization, and more.

Who is distorting it and why? Aren't those that distorted his paper the ones that have lied? When the media says that his reasearch claims that autism is linked to a vaccine, when it actually doesn't say that, who is to blame?

Here is a copy of the retracted study: http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-paper.htm It's fairly short, so feel free to read it and find that it clearly states that studies should be done to see if there is a link, not that there is actually a link.

Who has the most to gain from building the straw man to be burned? Will anyone else that suggests that new vaccines or combinations of vaccines should undergo more rigourous studies and testing be written off as just another Dr. Wakefield?

I'm not really that interested in defending Dr. Wakefield, I'm more interested in how easily people can be manipulated by sensational journalism and the possible reasons behind the big push to make this a huge media story this week. Maybe it's a distraction from another newsworthy event, or to get more people to be part of the vaccine consumer herd.

 

[Archangel M]

He distorted the data in his own reports..thats the news.

 

[crushing]

He distorted the data in his own reports..thats the news.

His report said he couldn't rule out a link and that more studies need to be done. That has been distorted to THERE IS A LINK!

 

[Tez3]

This is why it's hit the news. The journalist who did the expose has published all the details this week in the British Medical Journal. I imagine as it's old news here it hasn't been picked up by our press again but I'm assuming it's not been carried by the press before in the States. Here's the article.


http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full