According to the British Sunday Times, the whole modern anti-vaccination movement is premised on fraudulent research.
THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.
Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.
That was a decade ago. Now, this is to caution that there may be valid medical arguments for refusing vaccinations, but this was a pivotal moment. Most of the medical community had rejected the study out of hand, and it was assumed that the profession was simply rounding the wagons out of special interest. Many of the authors of the study eventually distanced themselves from the conclusions.
Meanwhile, Measles is on the rise in the UK. Only just over a hundred cases in the US, though the vaccinations are mandated by law here for school-going kids. Polio is also in the tens here, but we’ve had polio vaccines for some time now. 20 years ago there were nearly 350,000 cases of polio worldwide. Under various programs hundreds of millions of kids were vaccinated. By 1999 the cases had dropped to 7000. The timeline elaborates.
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February 9, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Eric Kirk
Wow. I made this post tonight and since then my spam filter has caught 6 health related spam hits. Amazing.
February 9, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Eric Kirk
Make that 9. Thank you WordPress!!
February 10, 2009 at 12:04 am
Anonymous
Yeah, never mind that Guardacil has turned into a giant scandal exposed on CBS News no less… just like those “kooks” on talk radio warned us of TWO YEARS AGO.
February 10, 2009 at 12:41 am
Anonymous
A giant scandal because it “encourages sexual behavior.” The religious right really needs to give up on trying to argue science. Every drug has side effects. Even aspirin.
February 10, 2009 at 7:28 am
Anonymous
It’s hurting people, physiologically, as in it injures them. I could care less who they screw or how often. It’s making them sick — or do you not really care about the health of young women, so long as they are sexually available to you?
February 10, 2009 at 7:33 am
Science 101
Let them refuse to vaccinate their kids. We need to cull stupidity from our gene pool.
February 10, 2009 at 9:18 am
Carol
My great uncle had polio as a young lad, and was crippled for life.
When my children were babies I read mixed information regarding immuniztions. I remember one mom that lied about her children’s immunizations to get her children into public schools. Her reasoning was that “If the other children are immunized, then why should I immunize my children?”
I thought that was dangerously selfish on her part. I received immunizations as a kid. My children have received immunizations at the appropriate times. With each immunization we were given a written list of potential side effects to look for after the child received the immunizations.
Granted there are reactions. I have had an allergic reaction to the flu shot last year, so I can’t tolerate them. One of the reasons I stopped working as a nurse was that I had an allergic reaction to a hepatitis B vaccine, which was a series of required vaccines by my former employer in order to work as a nurse. Since my time as a nurse, I have also developed an allergic reaction to latex gloves. I know several former nurses that can not tolerate latex. One former nursing colleague developed such an allergic reaction that it affected her breathing and lungs.
February 10, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Jane
Hmmm…… even if there is not a link to autism, there are some nasty ingredients in vaccines. Aluminum, human fetal cells, formeldehyde…. There have been reputable studies linking children’s behavior disorders with toxicity and heavy metal exposure. Also, people don’t realize how many more shots children have today, and in combined doses. I received around a dozen shots when I was a child. Nowadays, children receive thirty something shots. Are children really healthier today than in the past? I used to teach in the local schools and noticed a large number of children with allergies (seasonal and food) and asthma.
February 10, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Eric Kirk
Jane, I think there’s plenty of discussion to be had, but I should point out that a large number of kids around here don’t get the shots. Probably higher than average, excepting the inner cities where they don’t get the shots because of inadequate services as opposed to choice.
February 10, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Melanie
That one study is far from being the entire reason behind the anti-vaccine movement. There are questions about the Pertussis component of the DPT vaccine; there were considerable questions about the Sabin (as opposed to the killed virus Salk) vaccine, which contained live polio virus and was in fact the cause of the only cases of polio in the US in the past decades; Salk himself spoke of the danger of using the live vaccine carelessly since it passes through the infant’s body and can endanger those who change the diapers etc. The Hep B vaccine is a genetically modified vaccine, and Jane is quite right that some vaccines contain many problematic ingredients.
In the state of California parents wishing their children to attend public schools but who, after due research and consideration, do not wish said children to have the 30 odd shots now recommended, may sign statements that they are philosophically or religiously opposed to the vaccination of their children. Most school districts will not tell you this.
February 10, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Anonymous
Sigh. It used to be the right wing that was anti-science.
February 12, 2009 at 11:38 am
Eric Kirk
The fallout from the report or synchronicity? The court just tossed out the autism parents’ lawsuits.
February 12, 2009 at 12:52 pm
olmanriver
sigh. science in the service of industry isn’t good science….
“(NaturalNews) While the mainstream press is widely reporting a new study “disproving” any link between autism and mercury-containing thimerosal in vaccines, no one has bothered to point out that the study was published in a medical journal stacked full of ads from the very same drug companies that manufacture and market vaccines. The Journal, the Archives of General Psychiatry, is the pro-drug psychiatric arm of the American Medical Association, a pill-pushing organization tarnished by a history of conspiracy against alternative medicine and the promotion of toxic substances like cigarettes with full-page ads in its flagship publication, JAMA.”
http://www.naturalnews.com/022479.html
for a more in depth look at the alternative view on vaccines….
http://www.naturalnews.com/022955.html
February 18, 2009 at 11:09 am
olmanriver
an example: Voting Himself Rich: CDC Vaccine Adviser Made $29 Million Or More After Using Role to Create Market
February 18, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Eric Kirk
I don’t necessarily disagree. There’s plenty of corruption in the medical industry, and the AMA can be very rigid on many fronts. But “alternative medicine” is also rife with fraud and hucksters, and there are no standards by which to hold them. I’ve dealt with some of them in my practice, and some of the people who unfortunately have the respect and dollar of many a good hippie really should be in prison. That’s not to say that all “alternative medicine” however defined should be cast in the same light. But there is something to empirical science in terms of evaluating cause and effect, and I wouldn’t trust any remedy which has not survived some form of objective testing. But that’s a topic for another thread.
February 28, 2009 at 10:41 am
olmanriver
i know this thread has frayed, but some might be interested in knowing just what is in the vaccines: http://www.informedchoice.info/cocktail.html
March 9, 2009 at 10:39 am
olmanriver
the facts that i never see addressed is the lack (or near abscence) of autism in groups that do not vaccinate… the amish are one example and ”
In Chicago, Homefirst Medical Services treats thousands of never-vaccinated children whose parents received exemptions through Illinois’ relatively permissive immunization policy. Homefirst’s medical director, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, told us he is not aware of any cases of autism in never-vaccinated children; the national rate is 1 in 175, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We have a fairly large practice,” Eisenstein told us. “We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we’ve taken care of over the years, and I don’t think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines. “We do have enough of a sample,” Eisenstein said. “The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We’re all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there’s no communication. It’s frightening. You can’t touch them. It’s not something that anyone would miss.”
March 9, 2009 at 11:06 am
Anonymous
Here is what the Skeptical Inquirer has to say.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-06/novella.html
March 9, 2009 at 6:15 pm
omr
thank you, good article for the pro-vaccine side. ‘contradictory evidence’ indeed!