Weiye Loh's Library tagged Vaccine →  View Popular, Search in Google

The MMR research paper, which triggered a high-profile anti-vaccine campaign, led by such celebrities as actress Jenny McCarthy, involved 12 children between the ages of three and nine. All had brain disorders. The parents of eight of them reported that signs of autism arose within days of the children receiving the MMR vaccine.

“It was just too cute,” Mr. Deer says of the findings. Through the Freedom of Information Act, he discovered that Dr. Wakefield’s research had been funded by the British Legal Aid fund, and that the children had been recruited through lawyers and anti-vaccine groups.

Dr. Wakefield sued him and The Sunday Times for libel, but later withdrew the charges and was forced to pay Mr. Deer’s legal costs, which amounted to £1.4 million (almost $3-million). In the subsequent medical inquiry, Dr. Wakefield was shown to have had “a callous disregard” for the “distress and pain” of the developmentally challenged children, some of whom were subjected to invasive “high risk” procedures, including lumbar punctures, without clinical reasons.

After the first story ran in 2004, Mr. Deer, who is unmarried and has no children, also revealed that Dr. Wakefield had patented a single measles vaccine after creating fear about the standard MMR shot.

While the consequences of Dr. Wakefield’s research were serious – immunization rates in Britain dropped dramatically and measles outbreaks ensued – it also gave parents of autistic children a purpose (however ill-founded) in which to find solace. How does he feel about taking that away?

“I can’t think through the consequences of trying to tell the truth,” he stutters, seemingly surprised by the question. After a thoughtful pause he adds: “I think those parents are freer for having the truth than being caught in denial and deception.”

one reason that has experienced a dramatic upsurge over the past decade or so has been the fear that vaccines cause autism.

The connection between autism and vaccines, in particular the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, has its roots in a paper published by Andrew Wakefield in 1998 in the medical journal The Lancet.  This link has already been completely and thoroughly debunked – there is no evidence to substantiate this connection. But over the past two weeks, the full extent of the deception propagated by Wakefield was revealed. The British Medical Journal has a series of articles from journalist Brian Deer (part 1, part 2), who spent years digging into the facts behind Wakefield,  his research, and the Lancet paper

Unbelievably, some groups still hold Wakefield up as some sort of martyr, but now we have the facts:

 
• Three of the 9 children said to have autism didn’t have autism at all.
• The paper claimed all 12 children were normal, before administration of the vaccine. In fact, 5 had developmental delays that were detected prior to the administration of the vaccine.
• Behavioural symptoms in some children were claimed in the paper as being closely related to the vaccine administration, but documentation showed otherwise.
• What were initially determined to be “unremarkable” colon pathology reports were changed to “non-specific colitis” after a secondary review.
• Parents were recruited for the “study” by anti-vaccinationists.
• The study was designed and funded to support future litigation.