So now what are the granola munchers gonna hand-wring over now?

[stormgren]

The controversial study conducted by Dr. Andrew Wakefield linking the MMR vaccine to autism lead to a lot of hippy-dippy types and tinfoil hatters not vaccinating their children and creating little elementary school aged disease vectors.

Now, it appears that Dr Wakefield manipulated his data.

Additional information hereSo, given these allegations

Comments

[que_sara_sara]

Unfortunately, the "He Needed Killin'" law is no longer on the books in TX; if it was I would have happily been one of the twelve required.

[kadiera]

The new and improved argument against all vaccines is that most of the diseases that we vaccinate for aren't that bad, the vaccines are more likely to cause issues than the disease in question, and your kid probably won't get them anyway.

Oh, and that people only die from diseases in 3rd world countries, and even when there *are* outbreaks, only half the people who get the disease weren't vaccinated, which means vaccines don't work, because just as many people who *did* get vaccinated got sick.

That last one is a failure to understand basic statistics though. Percentage of non-vax'd kids getting sick is much much higher than the percentage of vax'd kids.

[randomdreams]

As I recall from my microbiology classes, the damage ratio varies by disease but as an average across diseases from diphtheria (on the safe side) to tetanus (on the horrendous side) you're 1000 times more likely to get permanently damaged or killed from complications from the disease, than from complications from the vaccine.

[tisiphone]

Well, you know, childhood diseases aren't so bad today when they consist of Fifth disease, chicken pox, and stomach flus. Wait until all those healthy unvaccinated children start dying or going blind from measles and I guess we'll see how safe childhood diseases are.

[tisiphone]

Sadly, some of these same people now think the evidence is Big Pharma Conspiracy, not that the guy might actually have lied.

*munches on some granola while trimming his wheat grass*

[ninadiel]

I wouldn't throw the whole case out the window because one doctor was a douchebag.. I work around 100's of doctors (trust me, they're all douchebags in their own way)

Another thing that should be consider before dismissing everything and continuing to vaccinate is that some vaccines are obsolete. I have seen and read about currently relevant cases in the US, where fully immunized children and adults are coming down with measles and shingles and other disease, because guess what, they have mutated and the vaccine was a waste of time to begin with..

Re: *munches on some granola while trimming his wheat grass*

[stormgren]

Given that the whole thing started *because* of this douchebag, I will throw the whole case out of the window. Because many many follow-on studies show no link between the two, and his is pretty much the only one that ever did.

While some vaccines may be obsolete, it means that newer vaccines need to be developed, but not as an argument against them.

Re: *munches on some granola while trimming his wheat grass*

[niteshad]

Cooking one's data is one of the most heinous breaches of ethics a scientist can make. Once such allegations have been proven true, no mercy should be shown to such individuals in their punishment, especially when the scientific field in question involves human life. If professionally licensed, they should lose their license to practice. They should also lose their job, because they have most certainly abused the trust that the non-scientific public has placed in them.

[uplinktruck]

Oh my God...

What Que Sara Sara said only double. Why is it the number of grievous sins against humanity by people in positions of trust seem to be going up in logarithmic progression?

From judges to doctors. Has our society really gone that far down the crapper?