Is there any area of anything that isn’t corrupted by money [he asks rhetorically]?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 report in the journal Lancet purporting to show a link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella “was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud,” says Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal, in an editorial published Tuesday. The editorial accompanies the first of three reports by British investigative journalist Brian Deer that document how Wakefield manipulated data in his attempts to prove something that he “knew” before he started his research. Most of the information in the reports has been published previously, but the recent publication of the General Medical Council’s 6-million-word transcript of the hearing in which Wakefield’s license to practice medicine in Britain was revoked allowed the editors of BMJ to peer-review Deer’s reports and confirm the extensive falsifications in the original Lancet paper.
[…]
The original paper authored by Wakefield and 12 others involved 12 children with autism, nine of them with a regressive form in which the children begin to develop normally, then lose speech or other faculties. The average delay between vaccination and onset of autism in eight of the children was 6.3 days, the authors reported, and the parents were said to blame the vaccine.But, Deer finds:
–Only one of the nine children who supposedly had regressive autism actually did. Three did not have autism at all.
–Five of the children had preexisting developmental problems, despite the paper’s claims that all were normal prior to vaccination.
–Although the paper claimed an average of 6.3 days between vaccination and the onset of symptoms, some children did not show symptoms until months later.
Well duh. The East Anglican global warming people and now this. Both were screwy positions backed up by fraudulent data.
How many children in developing and third world countries have been infected with life long debilitating illnesses because of this creep?
I’m not a Doctor, although there are several in my family. EVERYTHING I’ve heard on this subject since it started has indicated that this whole mess was right up there with homeopathic medicine – impossibly small amounts of something or other having any sort of effect at all….
Nice to see my suspicions confirmed, but what about the kids who were NOT vaccinated by anxious parents, and who later got sick (or worse)? This guy should hang…. Or get a ride through a wood chipper…. Feet first….
I can understand the global warming people – there’s money to be made forcing us to buy over-priced light bulbs or whatever, but what was this doctor’s motivation? Making more money by treating the sick kids?
i want adam curry’s comments on this because this article as well as the BMJ are full of complete ***
if you let people inject your kids with this stuff then YOU are responsible, negligence cannot be claimed for this kind of stuff, that is unacceptable.
Hmmmm – by peer reviewed studies that are duplicated?
Nah.
Best line of the article: The public should know that science is self-correcting. There have been plenty of frauds in science. However, they do not last indefinitely. Eventually, the truth is known and people reasonable people change their opinion.
Anyone that seriously thought the chances for their child’s future well-being were better by not vaccinating should check themselves into the loony bin.
#6
Missed a couple of commas in there…
My question is this… Why is thimerosal still being used in many US vaccines while it is banned in most of Europe?
Also why does every vaccine that I’ve taken in the last fifteen years make me feel like death for a week after taking them? (I dont take the flu shot anymore for this exact reason).
Vaccines can be extremely useful… I’m just concerned about all of the other junk that they put in there.
See here’s the problem I see with this. Where’s the motive to commit the fraud?
I can think of plenty of reasons to fraudulently deny the accusation but can’t think of any to make it.
#9
There is certainly some fraud, but mostly perpetrated against parents with Autistic kids.
I had an epiphany at an Autism fundraiser once. Most of the parents there were mid-40s and older. Lots of people who started on kids late.
The dominant experience of the night was that these parents really needed to feel like they got screwed by some third party. There was an almost religious certainty to the crowd that was surprisingly intense and off-putting.
This was quite a while ago, years. It was before Autism was a cause, and before the conventional wisdom put the anti-vaccine people close to Scientologists or Jehovah’s Witnesses.
But anyway, what I heard about more than anything else were these highly expensive legal and treatment options(scams). There’s a niche industry built off of these people.
Sad.
#9 Money.
Considering the BJM is as big a fraud as any other institute on this planet, i consider this a simple case of the pot calling the kettle black.
therefore both arguments are null and void.
-s
#9 Breetai: From another article: “According to Deer, Wakefield was paid around $750,000 by lawyers who were trying to sue the makers of the measles vaccine.”
#11 Alfred: “evolution related scams”
You mean religion?
pedro: He’s more like the righty agenda bankers who scam people for money.
I wish the word on this would be louder in the public. I’m sick of new parents asking me if they should get shots for their kids. I can’t imagine how painful this is for doctors (and worse, the parents that are supposed to trust their doctors but have misinformation feeds in their other ear). At least the schools here mandate the shots before a kid can start school (put your own kids at risk, not others).
“There is certainly some fraud, but mostly perpetrated against parents with Autistic kids.”
It is tragic that the parents of these kids have hung their hopes on this bad information. But the rest of society is now suffering with epidemics of childhood diseases making comebacks, due to many parents refusing vaccines.
It really is difficult for us to know what to believe and who to believe in all of this. Everyone has an agenda and usually its based on money. I’d just like to see independent studies done for all these vaccines. I’d like my country to conduct its own research before mass rollouts, instead of just trusting what the compromised WHO tell them every time.
The article refers to
“attempts to prove something that he “knew” before he started his research”
This is so common. It really seems to be a natural human instinct and often involves someone who really does have good intentions. It is very easy to allow one’s self to design research to support a pre-existing opinion.
It is also very easy to reject “bad” data, i.e. data that do not support the preconception of the researcher. Poor study design and “cherry picking” data occur far too often. Never trust anyone if they will not share all of their raw data, especially the bits thrown out.
Also it is wise to be wary of a study of only 12 individuals. Results from such a small sample are always subject to serious revision later even if the data haven’t been “massaged” extensively. Statistically rare outcomes are just that, rare but not impossible.
It is also very important to know who funded the research and why. Good science is supposed to be impartial.
Blind Stevie’s Rules for Understanding Science.
Always have your BS Detectors on when you encounter the following:
1.Studies with small sample size
2.Studies designed by someone who already “knows” the answer
3.Studies funded by an entity with a vested interest in the result
4.Researchers who do not share raw data, including the “defective” data which were not used.
Alfie:
“#15 Religion is a scam, not God…”
YM Religion is a money making scam. No god involved.
As long as we’re talking about it, I wonder what Jim Carey and Jenny McCarthy are gong to do about the lawsuits that might be coming their way.
#8 asked, “why does every vaccine that I’ve taken in the last fifteen years make me feel like death for a week after taking them?”
That question has a very simple answer. The way most modern vaccines work is that they infect you with a very small amount of the illness in question, prompting your body to naturally learn, adapt, and create the antibodies necessary to fight the infection. Thus, once your body is actually attacked by infection, you will already have the proper antibodies to fight the infection in your system.
However, this means that you are deliberately being infected with the disease. In some cases, such as the flu, there are so many variant strands they have to hit you with at once that the tiny amount you’re infected by is still enough to give you symptoms – and in some cases, the disease itself.
17 Alfred E Newman,
No religion, no God. They go together.
Now, science… that’s some good stuff right there.
I’m disgusted how many religious leaders in Asia and Africa oppose vaccinations for things like polio since the disease is “part of God’s plan”. Polio should be a thing of the past like smallpox.
# 8 dexton7 said, “Why is thimerosal still being used in many US vaccines while it is banned in most of Europe?”
It is still being used (though rarely) because it is an excellent preservative that does not harm the vaccine. The kind of mercury in thimerosol is not even the kind of mercury that will make you sick! And, if it were, the amounts used are so tiny you’d need a ton of vaccinations to see any effect. It is important to remember it is banned in Europe because of the backlash from the fraudulent studies. NOT because it had been demonstrated to be harmful.
“Also why does every vaccine that I’ve taken in the last fifteen years make me feel like death for a week after taking them?”
As Aberrant said, there is a very simple reason. Not quite as simple as he indicates but there are several simple rasons.
Probably the most common reason is the placebo effect – in reverse. You expect the vaccines to make you sick, so you get sick. Voila! If you do not have some other condition (HIV, cancer chemotherapy, etc) and EVERY vaccination you’ve taken made you sick, I suspect this is your reason. Not saying they didn’t make you ill, the placebo effect can be very real.
Aberrant says that you are being infected at a low level so your body can make antibodies. Well, that’s a real oversimplification. It’s true that vaccines used to work that way. Now very few vaccines used healthy live bugs. Most use clinically weakened pathogens (attenuated) or simply a part of the bug (no live pathogens). Unless you are immunocompromised, even the live virus vaccines will usually do no more than cause a localized inflammatory response. A little redness and swelling around the site of the injection. Even the attentuated bugs, though still alive, reproduce so slowly it’s almost impossible for them to make you sick.
Give you a real world example: How many cases of polio have you seen lately? Oral polio vaccine is a live virus.
#11
Why didn’t you throw the spherical Earth into your list of supposed scientific scams? Sheesh
#17
Technically, religion is a scam based on the fiction of a deity.
as an after thought to all the vaccine BS..
i was born in the early 60’s.. my mother can only recall me ever getting 4 vaccines at around 5yrs of age.
i have always cast iron immune system and rarely ever get sick.
so, if i’ve survived all these years without getting the some 20+ or more shots kids seem required to get these days.. whats the point of shooting the crap outta kids with vaccines these days?
secondly..surely this is not the soul study that the whole vaccine-autism thing is based on? with only 12 kids in the study?
someone please tell me hundreds of lawyers did not walk into a court room sighting this as the soul evidence and expect to win?
on the surface..without further research, it appears to me that this flawed study has been cherry picked to be the poster child to favour the pro vaccine camp. -it’s being spammed all over news radio.
-s
soundwash, lot’s of researchers jumped all over this when it was published saying it was bs. However it didn’t make for good TV news, which is a ratings game. Larry King has a lot more clout than a medical researcher.
Soundwash said
“so, if i’ve survived all these years without getting the some 20+ or more shots kids seem required to get these days.. whats the point of shooting the crap outta kids with vaccines these days?”
It’s called herd immunity. If a large enough portion of the population has immunity to a disease, it is more difficult for that disease to spread. An isolated outbreak of the disease is not able to grow into a widespread epidemic and remains isolated.
Large numbers of your peers born in the 60s did receive the shots, so you were not exposed to epidemic outbreaks of the childhood diseases that would have otherwise occurred. Even people who don’t get the vaccines receive some benefit from their widespread use.
#28, Technically, religion is a scam if the deity is a fiction.
I think as a child, I only received the polio, MMR, smallpox, diphtheria, and one other that I forgot what it was. Kids back then did get about 6 or 7 vaccines, not 20+. I understand that they give kids a chicken pox vaccine now. Getting chicken pox used to be a rite of passage instead of a vaccine.
I also remember that when I started at my university they wanted to give me a MMR shot again. The first shot is apparently supposed to be administered after the first birthday and I got it two days before my first birthday. Never got MMR due to that mistake, so I don’t think two days is a big deal.
However when I joined the military, I got all kinds of weird vaccines like African sleeping sickness and even a flu shot.