Autism And Vaccine Connection A Fraud

We all care about our childrens' health more than anything. This leads us to believe experts' advice in making the right decisions. What happens when those experts use their persuasion to give false advise? We have no other choice but to believe them seeing as how they ARE the experts. One expert is now being accused of lying and even fraud in his study that linked MMR shots to Autism.

Scott Hensley - npr.org

In the latest issue of BMJ, the British Medical Journal, investigative reporter Brian Deer makes the case that the infamous Lancet study, withdrawn last year, wasn't just wrong — it was fraudulent because key facts were altered to support the autism link.

The original paper reported on a dozen kids, eight of whom supposedly developed gastrointestinal trouble and "regressive autism," a form of the disorder that strikes later in childhood, after getting a combination vaccine against measles mumps and rubella. The work was led by Andrew Wakefield, an English doctor whose license was revoked last May for "serious professional misconduct" related to the work.

Where did the paper go wrong? Deer counts the ways after scouring health records and interviewing the patients families and various doctors. A few of the lowlights:

• Only 1 of 9 kids said to have regressive autism clearly had it. Three had no form of autism.
• Contrary to the paper's assertion that all the kids were normal before vaccination, five had some sort of preexisting developmental problems.
• Behavioral problems the paper said popped up days after vaccination didn't actually appear from months in some kids, a fact that undercuts the causality of vaccination.

Wakefield's hypothesized link between vaccination and autism was flimsy from the start, and has since been repeatedly repudiated. But the provocative Lancet paper fueled a vigorous backlash against vaccination.

An accompanying editorial in BMJ argues that "clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare" for good.

Read more at npr.org