hehehe, vindication! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/05/AR2011010505105.html
It’s got a recent date on it, but I thought they found this out some time ago? Wasn’t there a similar pit thread on this exact same subject (with the exact same conclusions) like 6 months or so ago?
-XT
There’s a MPSIMS thread on this.
I thought this was old news? I remember something like this from at least a year ago.
It was retracted a while ago. A recent BMJ study indicates that it was deliberate fraud, though.
It won’t matter. None of this is new, just that BMJ is finally stating it outright. It has been known for years that he falsified his data for personal gain. But the anti-vaccine forces won’t be swayed.
To some this is just more proof of how far the powers that be will go to smear their hero because he dared to stand up to The Evil Being Done. To them he is a victim of a politically motivated hatchet job, the true scientist being condemned for blasphemy by the Inquisitors.
And others never even heard of Wakefield. They are just listening to Jennie on Oprah and concerned that it’s “too much immunizations” and have heard stories about someone who someone they know knows whose kid got autism after a vaccine. And they read something on the internet …
Kids have gotten seriously ill and some died that did not need to because of this man’s greed. He’s still walking free and the damage he began will not be easily undone. Maybe this getting press will make my job of disabusing that faction of parents of their false beliefs a wee bit easier (pediatrician here), but I am not too optimistic.
Yeah, ain’t that the truth? Activist anti-vaxers are fucks…complete scum IMHO. The gods only know how many thousands or 10’s of thousands (hell, 100’s of thousands or even millions) of people this has killed in 3rd world countries throughout the years. Those deaths are directly on the fuck head anti-vax idiots collective heads and I hope they fucking feel those deaths someday deep inside where it hurts.
Those who aren’t activists are deluded fools who are putting themselves and their children at risk through their bone-headed ignorance. That’s bad enough…but they are putting other peoples kids at risk too, which IMHO is practically criminal.
-XT
The part that is new, or at least not publicly revealed to this point is the depth of the fraud perpetrated (for example, it encompassed gross misrepresentation of patient histories (including having kids in the study who did not have a diagnosis of autism - and in at least one case including a child whose autistic symptoms developed before he got an MMR vaccination).
This is probably true of the most committed and off-the-deep-end antivax fringe. Wakefield is their hero no matter what, and the response to the latest revelations seems mostly directed at spitting bile against the Sunday Times reporter who’s uncovered most of the scandal (Brian Deer). Their adulation is enough to keep Wakefield in a comfortable income from speaking engagements and consultation work for a long time to come.
I expect, though, that quietly much of the antivax crowd will stop mentioning Wakefield and his debunked MMR theories. These people are good at P.R. manipulation and at shifting the goalposts every time the evidence goes against them. Autism-associated gut syndromes blamed on vaccines will fade away, in favor of newly invented disorders linked to vaccine “toxins”.
The real victory we can hope for is that the news media will be taking a far more critical look at antivax claims, instead of sponsoring “he said she said” “debates” which give equal time to public health experts and people like Jenny McCarthy. For instance, the Anderson Cooper report/interview on CNN with Wakefield hit nearly all the important points and did not let Wakefield get away with his obfuscating, self-promotional antics. If the rest of the media increasingly gets it right too, the risk posed by antivax ideology will diminish (reporting in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times has shown the way also).
You think this is funny ? Vindication of what? This is a fucking trajedy and it is the anti-vaxers that are the victims dipshit !!!
There is nothing to laugh about here.
And the Woody Woodpeckerization of the Pit continues.
I’ll give you that, that there is nothing to laugh about and it is a tragedy, but I’m not willing to let the anti-vaxxers off the hook and call them victims. When I see something on the news that makes me question things, I do exactly that - question them. I try to find good sources of information if I’m going to make changes as important as my theoretical child’s life (not to mention the herd immunity that anti-vaxxers have jeopardized for all of us).
From Jenny McCarthy’s organization’s website:
(don’t you love those quotation marks? A “study,” conducted by "researchers, who attended a thing called a “university”
Ok, so read no further unless you can endure my, a bitter little man’s rant on Jenny McCarthy:
Back in the 1990’s we were given to think Jenny was a swell gal, a hot chick who wasn’t too stuck-up to goof on how she farts and poops, just like the rest of us. Silly us: the real message was “Sure, I fart and poop, but I’m STILL a hot chick, and you’re still all the rest of you.”
With typical hot-chick-entitlement-syndrome, Jenny McCarthy expected to enjoy her perfect motherhood. But when her baby was diagnosed with autism, somebody had to be at fault. I couldn’t be nobody’s fault, because life is good for Jenny McCarthy, and random misfortune makes her universe implode.
You know, if I had Jenny McCarthy for a mother, even if I *wasn’t *autistic I’d fake it until I was old enough to move out on my own.
As I said, I’m just a bitter little man, but even I know that when you’re making annoucements that people will listen to and probably believe, and which can influence life-or-death decisions, you have to be really, really careful. I mean…wiping-your-ass-with-a-chainsaw careful. That’s not the kind of resposibility we should grant to people who’ve been given a pass due to their good bone structure all their stupid fucking lives.
Agreed. They’re not victims. Dozens of excellent websites and books exist explaining why vaccination is necessary. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of science or history should understand that. While I can see why some of the information may appear a bit confusing at first, the good stuff can easily be distinguished from the tinfoil hattery.
This drips with irony, seeing that McCarthy has been relying on the credulousness of that very same “mainstream media” for years to push her agenda.
How awful that they’ve seen the light and turned against her hero. 
McCarthy’s son may not even have autism.
You want to sympathize with her but you mostly want her to just shut the fuck up. Her insane anti-vax stance only helps waste research money but puts all children at risk from vaccine preventable diseases.
They are absolutely not victims. I mean, not the true believers. Maybe there are some borderline cases who are just indecisive and decided to err on what they consider the “safe” side (they’re wrong, of course - with more and more people choosing the “safe” route, we’re going to lose herd immunity and see pockets of eradicated diseases pop up).
But the people actively out there promoting anti-vax bullshit aren’t victims. They are the perpretators, those who are doing evil. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been mislead - they’ve grabbed onto the bullshit full force and dedicated themselves to spreading it. The truth is out there, but they’ve deliberately made themselves blind to it.
You have to understand that the anti-vax position is essentially a conspiracy theory. The big evil corporations know it harms our kids but they force the government and scientists to cover it up (what do they gain by this? No idea. Vaccines are such low-margin products that there are only a few providers left willing to even make them). Once you enter the conspiratorial mindset, everything you see, including decisively contradictory evidence, becomes part of the conspiracy. Well of course all the studies say that there’s no link! They’re part of the conspiracies!
The difference here is - it doesn’t really hurt anyone if someone thinks the moon landing was faked or that the queen of England is a lizard person. But this causes people not to protect their kids against deadly diseases. So far they’ve coasted because the vast majority of parents are responsible and not retarded and so we have herd immunity - but in places where you see a high population of dipshits, there are legitimate outbreaks of diseases that were completely under control.
No surprise there.
Nor will I be surprised if this recent revelation does nothing to change the minds of anti-vaxers. Hell, we can’t even convince the “moon hoax” people of the truth, despite the prevalence of facts proving that we ACTUALLY LANDED ON THE MOON!!! Sad fact is, most people prefer ignorance over reality. :rolleyes:
Your rant aside, what is the story here? I thought that Wakefield’s fraudulent paper did suggest that MMR was implicated? Or is there some sort of nitpicking going on by McCarthy here with what “syndrome” is being discussed?
Anti-Vaxers aren’t victims.
Their kids- and their kids’ friends may well be though.
To hell with the anti vaxers. Just to hell with them. Either they are too stupid to live, or WORSE, they do know what’s what.