Tag: Andrew Wakefield
The “CDC whistleblower saga”: Updates, backlash, and (I hope) a wrap-up
Given that this is a holiday weekend here in the US and that I’m having a bit of a staycation right now, I had thought of simply not posting today or of rerunning a “classic” (if you want to call it that) blast from the past. But the topic I wrote about last week has only festered and grown bigger since Monday;...
Did a high ranking whistleblower really reveal that the CDC covered up proof that vaccines cause autism in African-American boys?
[Editor’s note: I realize this post might look familiar to some, although it has been tweaked and updated. Grant deadline Tuesday, meaning no time to produce original content up to the standards of SBM that you have come to expect. At the same time, I figured I had to contribute something this week. Hopefully this update on a certain bit of antivaccine...
Sharyl Attkisson and CBS News: An epic fail in reporting on the murder of autistic teen Alex Spourdalakis
An antivaccine reporter strikes again The damaged done by the antivaccine movement is primarily in how it frightens parents out of vaccinating using classic denialist tactics of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). Indeed, as has been pointed out many times before, antivaccinationists are often proud of their success in discouraging parents from vaccinating, with one leader of the antivaccine movement even...
The murder of autistic teen Alex Spourdalakis by his mother and caregiver: What happened?
Editor’s note: This is an extra “bonus” post. Basically, it’s a revised version of a post I did at my not-so-super-secret-other-blog last week. The issue, however, has disturbed me so much that I felt it appropriate to post it to SBM as well. Fear not. There will be a new post by yours truly on Monday. Sometimes, in the course of blogging,...
“Piltdown medicine” and Andrew Wakefield’s MMR vaccine fraud
Pity poor Andrew Wakefield. Well, not really. I tend to view what’s happening to him yet again as the chickens coming home to roost. Let’s put it this way. 2010 was a terrible year for him, and 2011 is starting out almost as bad. In February 2010, the General Medical Council in the U.K. recommended that Wakefield be stripped of his license...
Journal Club Debunks Anti-Vaccine Myths
American Family Physician, the journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians, has a feature called AFP Journal Club, where physicians analyze a journal article that either involves a hot topic affecting family physicians or busts a commonly held medical myth. In the September 15, 2010 issue they discussed “Vaccines and autism: a tale of shifting hypotheses,” by Gerber and Offit, published...
Andrew Wakefield Fights Back
Dr. Andrew Wakefield was almost single-handedly responsible for frightening the public about a possible association between autism and the MMR vaccine. His alarmist recommendations directly led to lower vaccination rates and a resurgence of measles to endemic levels in the UK. The MMR/autism interpretation of his 1998 article in The Lancet was retracted by 10 of his 12 co-authors. The article itself...
The story of Andrew Wakefield in pictures
I’ve blogged a lot about anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield over the years. The story has become long and convoluted, and to tell it takes a lot of verbiage, even by my standards (or those of Kimball Atwood). However, I’ve found a good resource that tells the tale of Andrew Wakefield and his misdeeds in a highly accessible form: The question at the...
Dr. Jay Gordon: Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
Dr. Jay Gordon is dissatisfied with how a PBS documentary handled the vaccines-autism controversy. Despite a lengthy effort at rebuttal, none of his points reflect what is known scientifically about vaccines and autism. Instead he relies on unjustified claims, appeals to emotion, and tacit assertions that his clinical judgment is equal, or superior, to the scientific evidence to date.