Andrew Wakefield: autism inc

[mr blur]

Andrew Wakefield's 'dishonest and irresponsible' research into the causes of autism led to his being struck off by the General Medical Council. That would have ended most doctors' careers. Instead, the MMR 'martyr' moved to the US – and into reality TV

<snip>

For three days at the end of January, the Renaissance hotel in Washington DC fills up with television executives from around the world. The Realscreen Summit is where the makers of reality TV gather to discuss ideas, negotiate deals and discover the next Apprentice or I'm A Celebrity. Among the estimated 2,200 people who had paid up to $1,600 (£1,050) this year to try to snag face time with an exec from Freemantle, TLC, Discovery or National Geographic was an Englishman in his mid-50s wearing jeans, a crisp, white shirt and loafers, and carrying a MacBook. On his badge were the words "Autism Team".

This man's pitch was a reality TV series about autism, and he had a short trailer on his laptop: an autistic child screams; another bites his mother's hand; another repeatedly and violently slams a book against his head. Then a narrator tells us that "every day across the world, medical symptoms of hundreds of thousands of people with autism are being ignored". Cue piano music and the titles, The Autism Team: Changing Lives.

<snip>

The man in the white shirt and jeans punting the prospective TV series that day was Andrew Wakefield, coauthor of a now notorious 1998 study, published in the Lancet, that suggested a possible link between autism, gastrointestinal disease (it was Wakefield who coined the term "autistic enterocolitis", which Krigsman diagnoses in the Autism Team trailer), and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Afterwards, Wakefield called for the suspension of the triple jab, which caused widespread panic and is said by his critics to have resulted in a drop in the number of parents choosing to vaccinate their children. Cases of measles rose from 56 in 1998 to nearly 1,400 in 2008. In 2006, a 13-year-old boy became the first person in more than a decade to die of the disease in Britain.

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/06/what-happened-man-mmr-panic

This greedy liar will do anything to make money out of people's problems

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. And, in today's news: Wales measles: Long queues for MMR jabs at hospitals

Hundreds have queued as four south Wales hospitals offer free MMR jabs aimed at curbing a measles epidemic.

People began waiting at one, Morriston Hospital in Swansea, an hour before the doors opened at 10:00 BST on Saturday.

By early afternoon the local health board said about 800 vaccinations had been administered.

The outbreak has affected nearly 600 people so far in south, mid and west Wales, and sessions are also being held in Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-22048635

[LeftishBrit]

2. Ugh. I am glad that the influence of such people is declining in the UK.

Sorry to the Americans on the forum, that apparently the general response of such people is to try for better luck in America.

If only the vaccination quacks were prepared to devote half as much of their attention to the serious problems that real pollutants create in the world, maybe they might do some good!

And while autistic people seem to be more susceptible than others to a wide variety of medical problems, it is certainly not the case that there is an extremely close relationship between autism and inflammatory bowel disease. Most autistic people don't have bowel disease, and most people with childhood onset inflammatory bowel disease (me, for example) don't have autism.