Not just the 'States, either - he has devoted followers all over the world. I think he just went where the money was, the bastich.
Good riddance to him.
Unfortunately, as other posters have stated, the damage has been done.
Loonball parents will continue to blame the “evil big pharma” industry for poisoning their children.
Loonball or unethical doctors (see Geier, David, and Geier, Mark) will continue to prey upon uneducated or overeducated (because they know better than scientists!) loonball parents to push untested and dangerous alternative treatments for autism.
Millions of research dollars will probably continue to be spent in a effort to once and for all convince said loonball parents that there is not a link between vaccines and autism.
And Wakefield, that bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling, will continue to be complicit in the ongoing epidemics of childhood diseases that once were decreased by vaccines but now are on the rise around the globe due to his bastardness.
For what it’s worth Kimmy the BMA isn’t a government body - its a professional association of doctors. True that the NHS will only hire people who the BMA approve of makes it tricky, but there is little involvement with the state in this matter.
That and this happened in the UK where we don’t quite have the same fear of ‘big government’ and regulation as across the pond.
Anyone else think the GMC, while acting in an objectively reasonable manner, are also acting in a way that is likely to make the conspiracy theorists see an establishment cover-up? I think they could have done a better job here… I see more problems in the future…
It wouldn’t have mattered at all what the GMC did or how else they might have handled it. Wakefield himself could have CONFESSED to being a bastard-covered bastard with bastard filling, and the nutjobs would have said he was coerced and tortured by big pharma into recanting his “groundbreaking” results.
Oprah’s “mommy warriors” have spoken - and they don’t care about the truth.
They could still have handled it better. Fuck it, I know that what he stands for is all bollocks and yet my gut feeling is it feels dodgy (and I know it isn’t) - that indicates to me that the way they are behaving gives the wrong impression, and that they should rectify that.
(no offense intended to you)
The GMC (and the world of science and rational thought) can’t waste time trying to figure out what “gut feelings” people are going to have regarding their results. Your gut feelings (whatever they are) are going to be different from the gut feelings of Jenny McCarthy and her drooling minions, and if scientists and medical professionals tried to anticipate and head off every gut feeling that might exist, nothing would ever get accomplished.
Trust me, no matter what they did, the anti-vaxxers would call “conspiracy! cover-up! big pharma strikes again! parents are the experts, not doctors and scientists!” and they have no intention of ever straying from that path.
I disagree. They should consider gut feelings, as they are there to protect the reputation of medical science… and part of that job entails understanding how the critics think.
Dude, you freaked me out with the name change 
Whose gut feelings should they consider? People who might, given sufficient evidence and education, be able to rationally consider the evidence in a given situation and use that evidence and their personal understanding of science to come to a conclusion?
Or people who believe that chelation therapy, magic herbs, castration drugs, and other dangerous and completely untested and LETHAL treatments make children not autistic? People who believe that pharmaceutical companies are behind a vast worldwide conspiracy to make children sick, for no discernible reason? People who are convinced that because they’ve read websites, they’re more educated and have more knowledge that scientists?
Seriously, I get what you’re saying, really I do, but they (and we) already know how the critics think. It’s outlined in my paragraph above. It’s found here, and here, and here. It’s found in the comment section of every story that Huffington Post runs on this issue. And there’s no countering it.
The answer to your question is neither. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of the population is neither rational nor a new age loon. Instead they use the behaviour of various authorities and individuals as a usually pretty good heuristic as to the truth (hence, incidentally, the prevalence of homoeopathy and other garbage - just going to point out here for the amusement of Americans that our socialist medical system has 4 NHS homoeopathic hospitals, or something like that) and in this case that heuristic could easily lead them to side towards “Dr” Wakefield, especially when combined with the traditional and usually quite sensible British mistrust of authority.
It is that majority, not women with beards who wear sandals in winter, that the GMC should have put more effort into convincing.
Ah, well, I can’t speak to YOUR loons or majority (didn’t realize you were across the pond), and obviously they’ll be much more aware of the system in which the GMC works than ours are.
I doubt they’re more in awareness than you are… frankly it wouldn’t surprise me if you were more in awareness than me 
I can only report what it looks like at a cursory, ignorant glance. Luckily I understand enough about science in general and statistical methods in particular to see what guff he was peddling… but it will not be the same for many of my countrymen 
In post #13, someone posted a link to the PDF of the entire findings of the board. I haven’t had a chance to read all 143 pages, but the fact that the entire findings are available seems to indicate to me that the process was relatively transparent.