I’ve written in the past about how Boulder liberals are not just stupid about economics. In substantial numbers, they’ve also risked children’s lives (theirs and others) by an idiotic decision not to vaccinate their children.
The anti-immunization fear was caused by a scientific hoax essentially similar to today’s “climate change” hoax, and possibly even more damaging to date. Indeed, as bad as Algore and friends are, one can’t make a strong argument that their self-enriching hoax has actually killed people whereas the anti-immunization movement has.
Now, the medical magazine The Lancet, where the original fraudulent article claming a link between vaccines and autism was published in 1998, is retracting the article, something that only happens when the article becomes known to be the product of fraud and not simply an honest error in research. The Lancet’s statement, however, underplays the hideous corruption which was behind the article’s publication.
The study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield has been found by the British General Medical Council (GMC) to have engaged in “dishonesty and misleading conduct” in his so-called research.
In particular, he lied about the medical issues of the children used in the study, he knew that the children were being used by a lawyer to gin up a class-action lawsuit against drug makers based on wholly fictitious charges of vaccines causing autism, and he did not disclose that he was paid by those attorneys or that he was trying to get his own patent on a new vaccine at the time.
Wakefield should be tried for assault, attempted murder, and murder since at least a few children have died from a preventable disease, and many dozens or hundreds suffered from these diseases unnecessarily due to his corruption and lies.
Here are a couple of resources to give you a sense of the damage Wakefield has caused:
http://www.drwile.com/lnkpages/render.asp?tragedies
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1
http://www.whyichoose.org/outbreaks.html (Note the pertussis numbers!)
5 comments
on 02/04/10 at 11:42
I don't disagree with your main point about government, but other than the H1N1 mess, I don't think that most people have generally thought about immunizations as a government-related issue.
You don't need to talk to the government to get an immunization and they don't need to provide them (despite their unnecessary involvement with the H1N1 situation). You just take your kid to the pediatrician and get the shot or drops or whatever.
I suppose this goes to show that it is not only government that can do harm of this scale.
Regards,
Ross
The whole H1N1 thing was sort of a joke. Yes, it hurt some people, but not at a substantially different scale than other flu outbreaks and, typically, government first didn't react and then over-reacted.
More and more reason to get government out of...almost everything.
Here is a former example that comes to mind complete with a cartoon about it:
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/25/document-drop-a-new-critique-of-the-2004-lancet-iraq-death-toll-study/
These examples along with the recent Climate Alarmisim fraud and other science fraud issues, I worry for what appears to be the alarming trend of scientists letting leftist politics taint their scientific objectivity.
Comment feed for this postLeave a comment
Following Obama's Economic Policies
