Posted on 01/06/2011 7:22:02 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Some may wonder why anyone still wondered about the credibility of an infamous study conducted by Andrew Wakefield and published by The Lancet that purported to show a link between vaccinations and autism. Two years ago, the Times of London published its exposé of Wakefield’s “research,” in which Wakefield faked data and drew conclusions from a ridiculously small sample — a fact that should have warned the Lancet to refuse publication in the first place, even if Wakefield hadn’t faked the data. However, belief in Wakefield’s claims continues, even after Reason addressed the issue in May 2010 once again as anti-vaccination advocates insisted that Wakefield’s research was valid and that the Times debunking was either incorrect or a sellout to Big Pharma.
This time, it’s Wakefield’s colleagues in medicine who are calling him a fraud:
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR VIDEO
A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an “elaborate fraud” that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday.
An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was “no doubt” Wakefield was responsible.
“It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors,” Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, told CNN. “But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.”
Britain stripped Wakefield of his medical license in May. “Meanwhile, the damage to public health continues, fueled by unbalanced media reporting and an ineffective response from government, researchers, journals and the medical profession,” BMJ states in an editorial accompanying the work.
How much will this declaration push back against the anti-vaccination industry? When this study first got published, it worried a lot of parents, who reasonably thought that a peer-reviewed study in The Lancet carried some scientific weight, an assumption we’ve learned since that time was sorely mistaken. As Sanjay Gupta says at the end, much of this has been known for almost two years, and even before the Times reported on Wakefield’s fraud, the study’s size and methodology had been considered very suspect, especially for its sweeping conclusion on a disease that’s still not well understood.
After that report, though, some continued to insist on opposing vaccinations in a movement that began to look a lot more like a religious movement than a rational response to scientific data. Take a look again at the Reason video from May (or watch the very NSFW takedown by Penn & Teller on their BS show) to see exactly who this announcement needs to convince. Will it change people’s minds about a supposed link whose connection never got substantiated in any subsequent study to have it called a fraud? It will certainly convince the rational, but those almost certainly changed their minds about vaccinations after the February 2009 exposure of Wakefield’s fraud. Having his colleagues in medical research call this “one of the greatest frauds in science” will certainly help spread the word, but don’t expect people with this much invested in their belief of eeeeeevil pharmaceutical companies to go willingly into the light.
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR VIDEO
See also here :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704405704576064590742569026.html?mod=fox_australian
Medical Journal Says Autism Study Was a ‘Fraud’ .
EXCERPTS:
An influential but now-discredited study that provoked fears around the world that childhood vaccinations caused autism was based largely on falsified data, according to an article and editorial published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal.
The article, by journalist Brian Deer, found that important details of the cases of each of 12 children reported in the original study either misrepresented or altered the actual experiences of the children, the journal said. “In no single case could the medical records be fully reconciled with the descriptions, diagnoses, or histories published in the journal,” the editorial said. It called the study “an elaborate fraud.”
The original article, by British doctor Andrew Wakefield and other researchers, was published in the highly regarded journal The Lancet in 1998. The study concluded that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine—a mainstay of public health disease prevention efforts around the world—was linked to autism and gastrointestinal disorders.
The findings provoked a still-raging debate over vaccine safety and they prompted thousands of parents to forgo shots for their children. Measles outbreaks were subsequently reported in several Western countries. Several epidemiological studies conducted since the Wakefield paper by public health authorities haven’t found any link between the vaccines and autism.
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Have you ever seen how many medical studies are the result of fraud? They number into the thousands, some companies didn’t even do the studies, they just faked them completely and these are for major pharmasueticals ...
Just heard this...
first Saccharin study announced to be a fraud last month
and now this one...
People and scientists etc. need to be held to account for the economic damages
and potentially the lives damaged through their corruption.
I did a study of one that proves that wearing a red shirt can make a drunk driver hit you.
Lancet, here I come.
Ever since that mass e-mail went around in 2005 (?) encouraging folks to wear red on Fridays in support of our troops, I’ve been doing that. Guess I’ll have to stop if I don’t want to get hit by a drunk. I await your study with bated breath. LOL
We are working at this time in the Beverly Hills/Santa Monica area and most people are opting out of the shots including us.
In my day we got maybe 8 total and a sugar cube our first 12 years of life.
Something seems wrong to me when they want to shoot up a baby with no immune system with 5 shoots at a pop.
I thought it was AMAZING when a manufacturer called the house to tell us we should come in and buy their product. That is spooky marketing.
I don’t buy the autism thing, but giving all these shots to babies is dangerous IMO.
How many are they up to now before 12, seventy?
Anything supported by Jenny McCarthy (including her ta-tas) is suspect.
Was this the study that indicted the use of mercury based preservatives like methiolate in vaccines? Methiolate and mercurocrome antiseptics were also removed from the market back in the 90’s during on of the Clinton administration’s crusades against bad things.
I think the number of fraudulent studies is probably low. More problematic is teasing causality from medical studies where the controls may be less than ideal. Just because two events occur in proximity to each other doesn’t necessarily mean that we can infer causality.
A letter to the editor in the WSJ recently on another topic, I think, illustrates how difficult medical research can be.
The author, a physician, described how as a medical resident he had been responsible for administering an experimental cancer treatment to a very sick patient as part of a clinical trial. The protocol called for an injection to be administered to the patient at precisely 2:00am. The physician, groggy from just waking up, was fussing with the syringe, trying to get the air bubbles out, etc. and having a tough time doing so. Just then, the patient died. Took a breath and died at 2:01am. There was a NRO for the patient so that was that.
The author’s point was that had he not been fatigued and muddled he would have administered the injection on time. The patient still would have died at the same time, but there would have been no doubt in the doctor’s mind that the injection had caused the death. The drug study would have been halted, there would have been investigations, etc.
IMO there is a pretty good chance in such cases that such observers are not even aware that they are selectively interpreting what they see.
Given the human propensity to act in this manner, our only real protection when such opinion is likely to really matter is better vetting pre-publication - which is enormously time consuming and often difficult to perform.
Same here. I didn’t use formula for my son, he had breast milk for the first year of life. I make all his food and we give him probiotics every day. He’s two and has only ever been sick once. We also take him to the chiropractor once a month.
They used to combine lots of vaccinations into a single shot. The lawyers have put a stop to that. If one vaccine is implicated in a suit the maker may point a finger at other vaccines as a part of their defense. Also, the deep pockets theory may result in an innocent vaccine company having to pay a settlement merely because their product was present.
Interesting post. Thanks.
This is devastating to “Dr” Wakefield. While he was doing his ‘study’ he also applied for a patent on a new MMR vaccine.
And then there was that $100K or so he got paid from lawyers that wanted to sue MMR vaccine makers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-468622/MMR-row-doctor-paid-children-5-blood-samples-sons-birthday-party.html
At some point this becomes criminal.
But I don't know whether it was with the original study or the "consensus" that the original study was a fraud.
They called the Atkins diet a total fraud too. They railroaded global warming critics until anonymous dumped their emails so we could see where the real fraud lies.
There is a lot of money to be made in vaccines. Something is causing the rise in autism. If not the vaccines then what?
They used to say mercury was an extremely powerful neurotoxin to be avoided at all costs. Then we found out they were putting mercury in vaccines and dental fillings. Then they said a little bit won't hurt you. Then they removed the mercury from most but not all vaccines. Then the FDA said mercury wasn't a problem.
It's just hard to know who to believe.
(NaturalNews) It’s being called the largest research fraud in medical history. Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer’s speakers’ bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to faking dozens of research studies that were published in medical journals.
Now being reported across the mainstream media is the fact that Dr. Reuben accepted a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to study Celebrex in 2005. His research, which was published in a medical journal, has since been quoted by hundreds of other doctors and researchers as “proof” that Celebrex helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery. There’s only one problem with all this: No patients were ever enrolled in the study!
Dr. Scott Reuben, it turns out, faked the entire study and got it published anyway.
It wasn’t the first study faked by Dr. Reuben: He also faked study data on Bextra and Vioxx drugs, reports the Wall Street Journal.
She rarely gets more than a head cold a year if that.
I'm not sure of the total count but there were several that had boosters especially when starting school. You are finished at 6 years old then another TB booster to start 7th grade. If the child is female they want you to have cervical cancer immunization shot (which is also controversial). I opted out of that when a couple of her friends were bedridden with stiff necks and fever after the shot.
Use your best judgment is all I can recommend.
Just like
Global warming
Save the whales (we are seeing whales dying of starvation here in AK due to overpopulation) and on and on.
The fake data is not unique to the medical zealots.
The data used in "The Silent Spring" was cooked
The spotted owl merry-go-round was based on false and bad data. BTW Do you know the real reason for the loss of spotted owls?
Remember the malformed frogs in Minnesota? Eeeevvvviiiill (Take your choice):
environmental estrogens
increasing levels of UV light (ozone hole)
other pollutants (name a local deep-pocket industry to sue)
and microscopic parasites (Hint, no deep pockets)
I have to blame in part, the execrable level of science 'education' in the US over the last 30 years. Physics classes "without math" (taught in my local district), no chem classes - too dangerous, and on and on.
(shakes heads)
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