Andrew Wakefield’s sham of a paper on vaccines. Today Lancet finally did it, much, much too late in my opinion. But the deed is done.
Just so folks understand, this is where the modern anti-vaccination movement got its legs. It is the primary source and fall back position for all their hysterical claims about the vaccines that have saved countless lives.
Probably what pisses me off the most is that even as of 2004 Lancet was making lame excuses such as how the paper would “raise new ideas”.
Sadly, this won’t mean a thing to stopping the anti-vaccination movement. They, being batshit crazy, already have a million excuse and handwavings already in use.
This, in spades. I’ve said it before on these boards - Wakefield is either a vicious sociopath or a fame-seeking whore, or both, and he’s directly responsible for unknown numbers of deaths. But his followers/believers/sycophants are just as responsible for perpetuating this nonsese.
And again, millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours wasted. We’ve lost so much time, and so many resources, and aren’t much closer to understand autism, all because this chucklehead’s bullshit diverted those resources.
Well, now that we’ve gotten the junk science of vaccines cleared up, let’s get rid of the junk science on DDT, which has probably killed more people in the last half-century than all other junk science combined (and possibly more than any other cause of death, period). I guess that makes Rachel Carson a vicious psychopath and a fame-seeking whore. And given that about 75% of Americans swallowed the politics hook line and sinker, I guess that makes 3 of the people in this thread assholes too.
Oh, and please post your ill-informed memes about baby birds and shit too.
You know, I swear to god I can’t even tell if you’re anti-vax, pro-equal time for all ideas regardless of their stupidity, or just doing your rebel without a clue “What are you bitching about”, “Whaddaya got?” routine.
What the hell? You want to start a Pit thread about DDT, knock yourself out. I’ll read it, but I probably won’t post much, since I don’t know shit about that particular controversy.
I do, however, know something about THIS one, so I’m posting about THIS one.
Fame-seeking whore, according to some authors who met him and looked at his various past deeds. He’s a poor scientist and basically had incredibly sloppy labwork, which he willfuly misinterpreted to support whatever idea occured to him first (and not coincidentally, would have been a huge change in medical knowledge were it true). He then publicized this and proclaimed it to the heavens, and rode it like a drunk frat girl riding the mechanical bull at Cotton-Eyed Joe’s.
I mean, this is a man who had handsome young actor appearing in a BBC dramatization about him standing up to the “corrupt”, “greedy”, and “shortsighted” medical establishment and corporations - less than five years after his findings were published. That’s just unheard of, and now looks even more ridiculous. And he played it for all it was worth.
Last I heard, he’d gotten a job in Florida with some anti-vaccine group.
The worst part is that while the more numerous deaths occured in poor countries, we won’t even know who was killed or how many. We can, however, point to people who really would not have died in the U.S. or Britain. IIRC, there was one poor autistic boy in England who died from Chelation Therapy.
Chelation is where they try to purge heavy metals. In this case, it worked - it stole so much Calcium out of his system that he went into convulsions and died right in the doctor’s office. It still boggles my mind that any doctor would have been willing to administer such a treatment, much less .go to the lengths it would take to kill someone. (And even if the intial theory had been true, Chelation would not and could not cause any improvement, certainly not in a teen or young adult.) Then again, doctors are really known for being more intelligent than your average bear, and about half as intelligent as they think they are. It’s a bad combination…
You are, in a word, wrong. The use of DDT for mosquito control has not been banned, and it continues to be used, effectively, for that purpose. The comparison fails.
I’ve posted this link before, but it bears repeating; vaccine controversy is nothing new.
It’s not about proving MMR, it’s about dealing with peoples tendency to fear the new/unknown/authority and parents magical thinking vs peoples willingness to exploit those traits.
And, in case you don’t have the time or inclination to review a 49-post thread, I’ll point out that Ben Goldacre, in this link provided by Jackmannii, does a pretty good job of describing why Wakefield is actually a minor player in all this, his LANCET paper notwithstanding. In fact, argues Goldacre, the UK media is primarily responsible for the hysteria and its consequences.
Journalist Brian Deer has done some very good work on Wakefield. The fucker has been yelping about the profits the pharmaceutical companies supposedly make on vaccines. Meanwhile he took out an actual patent on his own allegedly “safer” MMR vaccine.
Lavender Blue, oh, I figured the idiot part out pretty quickly.
Thanks for the link to the article. I have printed it out to incorporate it into my semi-annual “vaccines do not cause autism, you morons” lesson plan for all my classes. I’m already receiving indications from some students that they want to argue with me, so I always pull out my 3-inch thick file of reprints and demand that they read every article BEFORE they attempt to address the issue. That usually shuts 'em up.
