Autism-Vax Doc Scandal Was Pharma Business Scam 541
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."
Heh (Score:4, Interesting)
I know it's not the same thing, but this sorta reminds me of that TNG episode where two planets were suffering from a plague, and the cure was on one planet...but the cure was also a narcotic. One planet cured themselves of the addiction, but kept selling it to the other planet under the false pretense they would die if they didn't continue consuming it (their symptoms were withdrawal, not plague death.) I love how at the end of it, Piccard is like "Let's get as far away from this system as we can. Screw these loonies, let them duke it out." Can't remember the name of the episode, but I know it was in the first season.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [time.com] to break down what we call "herd immunity" [vaccinetruth.org], 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 [drgreene.com] 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.
Re:Heh (Score:4, Informative)
...to break down what we call "herd immunity" [vaccinetruth.org], 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 [drgreene.com] to one of the vaccine components.
And also those for who get the vaccine, but it just plain doesn't work, for whatever reason.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Heh (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes a special type of arrogance to post a completely incorrect comment, while calling other commenters "idiots" for getting it right, when there's a link to a nice, simple explanation of the concept in the comment you're replying to.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Heh (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Heh (Score:4, Informative)
It's worth watching episodes of Chris Morris's Brass Eye for very good examples of 'celebrities' who will say anything they're told to, or think they should say about subjects they know absolutely nothing about, as if they were leaders of society and authorities in their own right.
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My GF watches Oprah, and I've developed kind of a mixed opinion of her (Oprah).
She clearly devotes a great deal of energy to spreading medical information. As an example, she's built up the wildly successful real-life character Dr. Oz, who is a very hunky and charismatic guy that gets on TV and gives people some generally very very good medical advice.
A problem with Oprah's brand of medical and lifestyle advice is that she doesn't encourage independent investigation. She doesn't really encourage people to
Sturgeon's Law (Score:3)
90% of *everything* is crap - I keep on seeing evidence for Sturgeon's point. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law)
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Jenny McCarthy isn't batshit insane, she's just a gullible bimbo. Please don't insult all the truly batshit insane people out there by linking them with her dumb ass.
Re:Blame to go around. (Score:5, Insightful)
But... but.. but... she has "mommy intuition"! How could "medical science" ever trump that?
Re:Heh (Score:5, Informative)
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 [webmd.com] to get yourself an accumulation of toxic metals.
On the other hand, there's every chance Scott Shoemaker's kid was chewing on shitty [nowpublic.com] chinese-made [google.com] Cadmium-laced [examiner.com] or lead-laced [thedailygreen.com] toys. Or chewing lead paint from the house's walls.
Blaming the vaccines is stupid.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Informative)
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Of course it's profit. Medical treatments that go through extensive trials and can be proven to be efficacious and safe can make a lot of money. The key point being medicine must be proven to work. If it doesn't it gets dumped or discarded for one that does. It doesn't mean the system is perfect though or that pharmaceuticals are saints.
As for vaccinations, researchers have tried time and time again to show a correlation between various conditions such as autism and vaccination and
Re:Heh (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Autism VAX? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Autism VAX? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, while the VAX wasn't autistic, it certainly its users weren't playing with a full DEC, either.
Re: (Score:3)
I had the same thought. Why are these damned kids so lazy these days? Or is it stupidity? Is it that they're too lazy to spell out "vaccine", or too stupid to know how to spell it?
You are entirely correct, a VAX is an old computer. A Vaccine is the shot you get to immunise yourself from a disease.
2 mch txtng?
BTW, can you get these damned kids off our lawns?
Re:Autism VAX? (Score:4, Informative)
This is a Big Deal (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
And if there were a God of Irony, a study would be published that conclusively demonstrated that autism is caused by breast implants.
Re:This is a Big Deal (Score:5, Informative)
Best part was McCarthy's son was misdiagnosed. [hollywoodlife.com] ... of course that just means he "was healed through a range of experimental and unproved biomedical treatments." [ivillage.com]
She's STILL SAYING IT! (Score:5, Informative)
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 [huffingtonpost.com]
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:She's STILL SAYING IT! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's funny because EXACTLY DUE TO THIS TYPE OF STUPID REASONING, Japan split up the MMR vaccine into three separate vaccines given over a period of three years, and their autism rates just keep going up regardless. There's not even correlation between vaccination rates and autism, much less causation.
Re:This is a Big Deal (Score:4, Interesting)
The fascinating part to me is people *knew* there was a link. It was in the literature. People with PhD's and MD's were trotted out saying to the masses "You don't have my education, my experience. This Autism link is real. Big Pharma is poisoning you"
I see a lot of similarities to Global warming ^C^C^C^C Climate Change arguments.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:This is a Big Deal (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is a Big Deal (Score:4, Interesting)
It's actually worse than them hurting their own kids. They are potentially hurting other people's kids who can't get the vaccine because they are too young, have immune system problems, allergies, etc. If you can't get the vaccine, you usually rely on herd immunity to protect you. But thanks to Jenny McCarthy, Andrew Wakefield and the like herd immunity is breaking down in places. Parents who would vaccinate their children are having their babies die before they reach vaccination age.
Example: Dana McCaffery, a 4 week old baby, died of Whooping Cough in 2009. She was too young for the vaccine. Herd immunity should have protected her but anti-vaccination groups lobbied for parents to stop vaccinating and suddenly whooping cough rates rose. The head of one of these groups (the Australian Vaccination Network), Meryl Dorey, said "You didn't die from it (whooping cough) 30 years ago and you're not going to die from it today." This was *IN RESPONSE TO* Dana's death. Not just in response to it, but with Dana's parents in the room! She had the gall to question the diagnosis having never seen any of the medical information, merely because it went against what she believed to be true about Whooping Cough and vaccines. Luckily, Australia has taken action against the AVN, but this won't bring back Dana or any of the other babies who die of Whooping Cough, measles or any of the other diseases that shouldn't be making comebacks because we have perfectly good vaccines for them.
Re:This is a Big Deal (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens if the FCC's ban on Janet Jackson's nipple on broadcast television is conflated to be a psychological health risk, but you want to teach your child about the correct anatomical names of human's bodies? Or your babysitter reports your wife because your 3 year old son says he took a shower with Mommy? Or, if someone says 3D television can cause eye damage in children and you let your 5 year old watch Monsters vs Aliens on the new 3D tv you got for Christmas? Or that homemade fried chicken you brought to the company picnic is too fattening and 20 people can testify that you let your child eat it, willfully ignoring the Childhood Obesity Epidemic (TM) we've all heard about on 10 different talk shows?
And all of this is completely based in my own attitudes toward health care. Other concerns from religious points of view are another set of problems. Maybe giving up chocolate for Lent traumatizes your child psychologically. Maybe the beef lobby convinces folks that Hindus are depleting their children's iron levels by not letting them eat cow meat. Etc...
The bottom line is that people should (in my opinion) be allowed to be as stupid with their health, and with their children's health, as they want to be. It's a simple stance, but very complicated to work out in the real world, I know. And I DO believe that Child Protective Services should be able to remove children from situations of grossly negligent parenting, things like no access to clean food or water, inadequate shelter, abusive environment, etc, but even in those, the creeping grey areas can, and are, abused or misused in ways that reasonable, caring people don't intend.
Re: (Score:3)
And that would be all fine and good if they were the ones who paid the price. But they aren't. It's their kids who'll be/have been hit by this. It's not their lives they are screwing over by being stupid; no, they are harming people who are just as entitled to the protection of la
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Of COURSE these people won't change their minds! To do that they would have to be capable of experiencing cognitive dissonance. Want to read some lunacy? Just check out what Jenny says on her stupid website [generationrescue.com] this week:
Recent Dr. Andrew Wakefield Media Circus: Much Ado About Nothing
The mainstream media is in a frenzy over a new "study" claiming that Andrew Wakefield's 1998 Lancet paper was fraudulent. For years, the media has mischaracterized Wakefield's work as implicating the MMR vaccine in the autism epid
Re: (Score:3)
You know, I was going to post more follow up messages about Dr. Wakefield's apparent lack of ethics, but two other posts in this article gave me pause.
From A nonymous Coward [slashdot.org]
from suv4x4 [slashdot.org]
These were both good comments, and made me realize that I was letting my emotion overtake my good judgement. Do I believe that Dr. Wakefield was some evil charlatan laughing in a study while drinking whiskey and petting a white cat? No, I don't. Its more likely that years of research and the lure of money clouded his judgem
Re:This is a Big Deal (Score:4, Insightful)
My friend has four children, all with some form of autism -- even the girls. Many of the "leaders"of this movement are desperate, angry people who have suffered much at the hands of a little understood mental disease, and grasp at any shred of evidence to link autism to something in the environment, something the can control. I don't think well hear the last of anti-vaccination until autism's cured or becomes genetically screenable.
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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.
You're talking about the same guy who invited kids to his son's birthday party, and then paid them to take their blood samples. I don't think the words "conscience" and "Andrew Wakefield" belong anywhere near each other.
Re:This is a Big Deal (Score:4, Funny)
Its worse than that! There are an uncountably infinite number of values between 0 and 1!
Only if you are irrational.
Obligatory Office Space Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
I think the problem is called conscience. That's what corporations are for, it's intelligence without conscience.
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That's what corporations are for, it's intelligence without conscience.
For a corporation to lack a conscience, it has to have CxOs without consciences. Of course, having one automatically disqualifies one brom being a Chief Officer of most corporations.
Re:Obligatory Office Space Quote (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the problem with corporations, right there, in a nutshell.
They favour the concentration of a large amount of power in the hands a few people. The larger the corporation (and thus the more power it wields), the more likely the CEO is to be a sociopathic bastard, because this is what it takes to compete with all the other sociopathic bastards to get to the top of that massive pyramid.
So the most effective means of consolidating power is also the most likely to place that power in the hands of someone who'll misuse it. And they get to command the actions of otherwise OK guys who have become the equivalent of the henchmen of Dr Evil just because they have this overpowering urge not to be street people.
Re: (Score:3)
They favour the concentration of a large amount of power in the hands a few people. The larger the corporation (and thus the more power it wields), the more likely the CEO is to be a sociopathic bastard, because this is what it takes to compete with all the other sociopathic bastards to get to the top of that massive pyramid.
In reality, studies have shown this to be the exact opposite of true. Typically nice guys get elevated faster than sociopathic bastards, because people don't like to promote sociopathic bastards, especially not to positions above them. Would you?
What happens is once the people get to the top, they become corrupted by the power. It happens again and again [wsj.com]. Here's a quote:
Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power
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Wrong. It's entirely possible to have an organization made entirely of normal people, yet have it behave in ways that are normally deserved for cartoony supervillainy. The trick is to make every member of the organization think that he's just doing his duty, just doing his job, just following orders.
This is what "banality of evil" really means: it doesn't take malice or greed to do evil, simple passive cowardice is quite suffi
Damage is already done (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Damage is already done (Score:5, Informative)
The problem was ignorant parents. At no point did anyone say that ALL MMR vaccines are dangerous - the (completely unfounded) rumours only ever circulated on the combined MMR vaccine. You still can, and always have been able to, get the separate vaccines which have been working since the 70's in just about everyone without any problems of the kind mentioned here. But parents didn't read that bit. They just read "vaccination" = "autism" (which happened to be complete bollocks anyway) and assumed it meant EVERY vaccination. Stupidity on the part of parents who can't read can't be blamed on governments or rogue doctors here.
In the UK (where this doctor was based and doing his research and started this scandal), you could opt for the normal, old, tested vaccines without any problem at all. It was only the new, combined MMR vaccine that ever had such claims against it. Doctors in the UK routinely offered the alternatives to parents who were worried. It was only the *dumb* parents who immediately steered clear of things that had been working, without problems, without dubious claims, and without association with any such scandals, even when they were offered them. The media over here actually did a good job of separating it out and offering correct advice, but some people always get too hysterical to actually LISTEN to what they are being told.
It's like saying that a particular model of car has been recalled because of faulty brakes and then NOBODY buying a car ever again. It's that ridiculous.
And it wouldn't be a felony, because he's in the UK and we don't have that word. However, he's already been dismissed by the GMC and will never practice as a doctor again. There's also the very-real possibility of legal action against the doctor, hospital, government advisers that listened, etc.
Re:Damage is already done (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, though, that people aren't inherently scared of cars. This whole antivax manufactroversy only got traction because a large portion of the population is simply scared shitless of needles. Like, completely and unreasonably unhinged when presented with something long and pointy that's meant to go in your arm. Do not want to the max extreme sort of thing.
Essentially, a lot of people were just looking for some excuse, any excuse, to justify to themselves why they shouldn't vaccinate their children - and Jenny McCarthy handed them one on a silver platter.
Re:Damage is already done (Score:4, Insightful)
While it may be hard to prosecute for this because it is not that black-and-white (and people can always play the religion wildcard) it is possible to prosecute negligent parents when it does go wrong and their children die of a preventable disease... It is not pretty since they already lost their child, but other people might learn from their mistakes... If people don't see the consequence and learn from it we all are at risk of infection so there is a reasonable incentive to prosecute and shame these willfully neglectful parents as much as legally possible so people will say 'they would never mistreat their children like that'.
Hmm... (Score:3)
Maybe, just maybe, so much power over life and death shouldn't be given to for-profit organisations?
Because then you end up with crap like this.
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Maybe, just maybe, so much power over life and death shouldn't be given to for-profit organisations?
Because then you end up with crap like this.
Continuing that line of thought, you can't pay or promote individual docs for their work, or they could falsify their results. The only option available is a union payscale. Similar to military doctors whom get paid pretty much on salary.
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"Wakefield began courting interest in a hundred-million-dollar diagnostics firm."
"...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"
The fact that you can make big money off this sort of thing is the main problem. While it was publicly-funded research, his idea was to use this in order to make money off the side from something like that.
Not *entirely* news... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [whatstheharm.net] is there to letting the parents decide [jennymccar...ycount.com] if they're uncomfortable?"
Hope the truth burns, folks.
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Maybe you guys should think about this the next time someone tries to advance a hate campaign against Big-Whatever? Maybe, just maybe, everyone running these sorts of hate campaigns has a similar motive?
The energy, food and beverage, agricultural, mining, banking, and manufacturing industries (and everyone else in the private sector except trial lawyers) could use a little fair-minded consideration.
The whole idea is flawed. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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.
Humorously your lazyness led you to have it completely backwards. The rate for measles, once diagnosed, is something less than 0.3%. But that requires a measles diagnosis. You can't discuss the death rate due to measles in the USA because its only single digits yearly for the entire developed western world. Its like debating the public health implications of protecting childrens heads from meteorite impacts. Before the measles vaccine, about as many kids died of measles as died of lightning every year,
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Check your numbers again. The actual infection rate was estimated at 90% of people had measles by the age of 15.
Now you are right that around 1 in 100 suffer the severe form, encephalitis, develops. Thoes who don't die are typically left with neurological issues. Please not that this is roughly the same rate as autism.
So IF 100% of autism cases were caused by the vaccine, then and only then would it be a toss-up as to safer with or without the vaccine. Plus you also have Mumps and Rubella that are also
Re:The whole idea is flawed. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The whole idea is flawed. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't discuss the death rate due to measles in the USA because its only single digits yearly for the entire developed western world.
One might think vaccination had something to do with that.
Actual fraud, or confirmation bias? (Score:3)
Re:Actual fraud, or confirmation bias? (Score:5, Informative)
He made investments based on the result of a study before he performed it, cherry-picked study participants, and then falsified results.
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Not quite, if you look at the timeline. He was receiving payments from a MMR=autism lawyer before he performed his study (such as it was), and he *investigated* the possibility of profiting off the research results, but he didn't actually incorporate the company until just after the Lancet paper was published.
I think Burnhard has a good point. Doctors and scientists form companies to profit from their discoveries all the time -- so long as the science is good, the results are published in open literature,
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Deer's other report indicates that Wakefield and/or his co-authors changed the medical histories of the patients when writing the study (no patient on the study went without having part of their diagnosis altered between original medical notes and the published results).
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Deer's other report indicates that Wakefield and/or his co-authors changed the medical histories of the patients when writing the study
Yep, but the examples I've seen of that have been shifting dates and adding details -- stuff that could be deliberate fraud with intent to deceive, but could also be a misguided attempt to "enhance" a connection that's already clear to you.
It's a subtle distinction, I know, and requires us to get into Wakefield's personal head games, but it's the same sort of thing as distin
It's too easy to say he was a fraudster (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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While you are indeed correct about the tabloid media and commercial news shows, this report is in the BMJ which caters to an entirely different readership. I find it incredibly unlikely that they are attempting to create panic amongst their readership to boost sales.
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.
And in so doing set
Re:It's too easy to say he was a fraudster (Score:5, Informative)
These were done before publishing the original study not after. I have doubts about where he had true convictions about his research.
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I agree and I made this same point [slashdot.org]. However, it's worth pointing out that his original scientific focus was on the connection between measles and *bowel disease*. He only got on to the autism thing after he was approached by a lawyer for a vaccines=autism group and offered a £150/hour retainer. At this point his science shifted toward a three-way connection between vaccine, autism, and bowel disease, and later to autism alone.
So while I agree that Wakefield may truly have believed his theory was co
The trap of a simple world view (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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> I'm not going into details, because I'm not trying to sell you a certain viewpoint on this "scandal" as correct.
Your post is thoughtful and well expressed. I'd love to get your viewpoints on the vaccine issue.
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This is the British Medical Journal we're talking about here, not a part of the mass media.
This is really great news for me (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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My free association of this statement reminds me of this joke.
Cal was out driving in the country, seeing how his new car handled the curvy roads at high speeds. As he rounded a corner, one of his tires blew.
When he got out of the car to change the tire, he noticed that he had stopped in front of the state mental asylum. There was also a man sitting on the brick wall in front of the facility.
The driver went about his business, not paying any attention to the guy on the fence. He first took his tire iron and
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Still, if you could do it all over, wouldn't you skip the vaccines?
Re:This is really great news for me (Score:4, Informative)
nope. Vaccines are proven to help stop the plagues that have caused a lot more suffering. I don't think its in anyway environmental other than our as a species sudden change of lifestyle.
foreach $SCARE cui bono ? (Score:3)
SARS, DDT, H1N5, CFC, SO2, WMD, CAGW, Y2K, MMR VAX ... the list goes on and on and on.
Re:Doesn't Jenny McCarthy look stupid now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Noooooooooo!!!!!!1111!11! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Noooooooooo!!!!!!1111!11! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Noooooooooo!!!!!!1111!11! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Noooooooooo!!!!!!1111!11! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Noooooooooo!!!!!!1111!11! (Score:4, Insightful)
Trying saying that to the mother of a son who died from whooping cough because she listened to 'experts' in the media and didn't get her children vaccinated.
Re:Noooooooooo!!!!!!1111!11! (Score:4, Insightful)
Or worse, how about the pre-vaccination age babies who died because kids around them hadn't been vaccinated. If it was just the people who didn't get the shot by choice who were dying, then I wouldn't mind this whole thing nearly as much. The problem is that once you fuck up herd immunity, you've fucked it up for everyone, including the very young, the very old, and those with compromised immune systems. And, of course, the really horrible thing is that the people who don't get the shot, may actually survive MMR perfectly well, since by the time they or their parents have made that choice they are a bit older and more able to resist the disease, they've just made it more dangerous for everyone around them.
And (and and and...) of course, as other people have mentioned, they're putting a chunk of the population at risk of death, simply to save themselves from the (as it turns out, rather specious) chance of getting a no doubt life-changing, but absolutely non-fatal disease.
In short, and pardon my directness, but speaking as a parent, fuck those who don't get the shots for themselves and their kids right in their entitled, self-centred, arrogant asses. They and their spawn should be given the choice to get them, and then airdropped on a remote island with all the rest of the assholes who think that the chance of their precious little snowflake having a disability is more important than the life of other people's so they can't screw it up for the rest of us. /rant finished.
OMG save the children (Score:5, Insightful)
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:OMG save the children (Score:5, Interesting)
My husband's cousin had a bad reaction to the polio vaccine and is in a wheelchair because of it. But I still vaccinated my children.
If you actually read the info sheet the nurse gives you with each vaccine, you'll see there are risks. Some small percentage of the population has a bad reaction to some vaccines, and the info sheets describe what they are and what symptoms to watch for. I weighed the risks and decided in favor of vaccination.
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I drink water every day. I'm assuming that the 500000000X dilution of adam and eve's piss should be so powerful it cures all illness.
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Worse, a chiropractor is a massage therapist that believes in fairy tales that many jurisdictions permit the use of "Doctor" in front of their names, creating the illusion of medical competency that simply does not exist.
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The thing that came out recently was the outright fraud [washingtonpost.com] in the research. Previously, the science was assumed to just be not reproducible.
Re:Hanging is too good for him (Score:5, Informative)
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But seriously folks... Dr. Wakefield's conclusion was wrong. His conclusion brought back diseases almost eradicated by vaccinations. Jenny McCarthy uses her "experience" over REAMS and VOLUMES of studies that PROVE NO LINK. I don't care if the BMJ gave Brian Deer a BJ to 'attack' Wakefield. That doesn't make Wakefield right. It doesn't make him more evil. I