Thursday, February 12, 2009

Fraud, The MMR Vaccine, and Autism

In February 1998, a paper was published in The Lancet that turned the world upside down for the parents of kids with autism. The study was extremely small, consisting of only 12 kids. In that study the researchers claimed that eight of the 12 kids' autism could be attributed directly to being vaccinated with the MMR vaccine. This set off a firestorm around the world. Parents who had been grasping for any explanation or reason for their child's affliction suddenly had a scapegoat. "It was that damned vaccine!" everyone said. It has been eleven years, almost to the day, when that study was published. Since then, tens of thousands of kids have not been vaccinated against Measles, Mumps, or Rubella because their parents were terrified that doing so would destroy their child's mind. But now the truth is revealed. The research was bogus. The findings were fabricated.

H/T Clayton Cramer

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

I heard about this on the radio. I have no idea why there has been an explosion of autism in this country, but it's horrifying to think this kind of malfeasance in the medical/scientific community has exposed children to multiple diseases through fear mongering. Just horrible.

February 15, 2009 5:36 AM  
Blogger Rorschach said...

By and large the "explosion" you cite is actually just better diagnosis and an expansion of what qualified as "autism" which encompasses far more kids than it used to.

February 15, 2009 9:07 AM  

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