US Court affirms thimerosal-autism connection "not...scientifically sound"

"US court rules again against vaccine-autism claims":

Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special U.S. court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness.

As I've written before, the connection between vaccination and autism was started by a deeply flawed study created (largely out of whole cloth, it seems) by British "Dr." Andrew Wakefield. The belief that vaccines cause autism has caused significant abandonment of vaccination both in the US and in Great Britain, resulting in probable loss of herd immunity for segments of the population, especially against measles.

In the US, the case against thimerosal-caused autism is clearly shown by the continuing rise in autism diagnoses despite the removal of thimerosal from vaccines. This leaves anti-vaxers reaching for conspiracy theories rather than admit that thimerosal doesn't cause autism.

One would hope that the complete discrediting of the original "research" linking autism to vaccinations would have terminated this foolishness. Since it hasn't, I don't think this court case is going to do much good in that regard.

I wish critical thinking were taught in schools. And that lawyers who brought patently silly lawsuits based upon discredited science were severely sanctioned unless they won.

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"Dr." Wakefield, vax hack, showed "callous disregard"

Britain's Dr. Andrew Wakefield, already infamous for fixing the data to demonstrate a non-existent link between autism and vaccination, has been called "irresponsible and dishonest" by the General Medical Council:

The doctor who caused a national controversy by linking children's triple MMR vaccine to autism acted unethically and dishonestly and had failed in his duties as a responsible consultant, a disciplinary panel ruled on Thursday.

The General Medical Council (GMC) also said that Andrew Wakefield had shown a "callous disregard" for the suffering of children and had brought the medical profession "into disrepute."

Ninety pages of charges were brought against Dr. Wakefield, and the GMC will further consider "whether Wakefield's behaviour amounts to serious professional misconduct, which could lead to him being struck off the medical register".

We can only hope.

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Autism / Vaccination Link Based Upon "Fixed Data"

(Photo: Child with Measles, Source: Allergy and Asthma Source, Rise in Numbers of Unvaccinated People Lead to Measles Outbreak)

The modern myth that "vaccines cause autism" was started by the February 1998 publication of a study by Andrew Wakefield in The Lancet. According to The Sunday Times:

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.

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab.

The suggestion that there might be a link between vaccination and autism has resulted in a 12% drop in vaccination in the UK (from 92% to 80%), with an attendant 24x increase in confirmed measles cases in England and Wales (from 56 in 1998 to 1348 in 2008).

It turns out, however, that there appears to have been serious misconduct involved in the study's publication. Also from The Sunday Times:

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children's ailments as described in The Lacent were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated.

There are also allegations that the children selected for the study were selected by, and the study paid for by, lawyers who were already pursuing litigation against vaccine companies.

What Wakefield seems to have done is not just dishonest -- he is apparently individually responsible for dropping the UK 15% below the threshold for total herd immunity (95%). If the allegations against him are true, he's personally responsible for thousands of cases of measles and some unknown numbers of deaths.

Any sensible person who knew the limitations of Wakefield's study would know that there was nothing to the alleged link between vaccination and autism: a single unblinded study of 12 individuals would be highly suspect even if the selection process wasn't subverted by lawyers. But thousands of parents have taken to heart the false idea that vaccination causes autism, and as a result thousands of children are unvaccinated, thousands have gotten measles, and undoubtedly some have died. Millions of dollars have been spent to disprove Wakefield's alleged "link".

Shame on you, Dr. Wakefield. You deserve everything that's coming at you.

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