Breaking News: Study tying vaccine to autism was FRAUD

[NutmegYankee]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40930256/ns/health-mental_health/

LONDON — The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.

The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published. Still, the suggestion the MMR shot was connected to autism spooked parents worldwide and immunization rates for measles, mumps and rubella have never fully recovered.

A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.

The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield's paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children's parents.

Also at CNN
Retracted autism study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html?hpt=T1


Yes, this is a DUPE, but the original thread sank like a rock and this needs to get out. Many nasty debates on DU have occurred over this very topic and the news that the link to the MMR vaccine was Fraud is very important.

[Posteritatis]

1. Unfortunately, the true believers will continue to claim it's entirely legitimate. (nt)

[hlthe2b]

11. Yup.... tragic, too...

I dealt with the aftermath of a child who had died from measles encephalitis. Vaccine objectors as parents. Everyone had to bite a hole through their lips, as compassion was clearly indicated and appropriate. But it was senseless and preventable.... and we were all angry at that fact.

[Statistical]

2. You won't convince the anti-vaxers. For them it is a matter of faith not science.

No different than Holocaust deniers or freepers having "proof" the world is only 6,000 years old.

The good news is as long at the anti-vaxers remain a small fringe they are mostly harmless. Even they still benefit from herd immunity. The real danger is someday their disease of anti-science becomes popular enough that they break the herd immunity and tens of thousands die.

[NutmegYankee]

3. Sadly, the herd immunity is beginning to weaken already.

The last two years recorded the highest rates for measles in several countries.

[TheMadMonk]

14. Whooping cough is on the uprise too. How soon before kids start...

...turning up with lockjaw FFS? And then diptheria as well.

And over the next few years as the girls of this era become sexually active, I strongly suspect we're going to see Rubella induced retardation on the rise too.

[NutmegYankee]

16. lockjaw is such a nasty demise.

I cringe at the thought of children dying from tetanus. I'll never forget the memory, where only the top of the head and soles of the feet are touching the bed from the muscle spasms, and then they die. :-(

[xchrom]

4. Recommend

[blondeatlast]

5. k/r/nt

[spanone]

6. k&r..

we humans are something.....

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. Dupe.

In the last hour, this is the fourth thread about this CNN article by my count.

I'm pretty sure it's out. Your concern about the "nasty debates" is duly noted.

[REP]

8. Kick

My rec disappeared.

[RainDog]

9. kick n/t

[drm604]

10. K&R

:kick:

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. Original article (reposted from my response to the LBN thread):

BMJ 2011; 342:c5347 doi: 10.1136/bmj.c5347 (Published 5 January 2011)
Cite this as: BMJ 2011; 342:c5347


Secrets of the MMR scare

How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed

Brian Deer, journalist



In the first part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school

When I broke the news to the father of child 11, at first he did not believe me. “Wakefield told us my son was the 13th child they saw,” he said, gazing for the first time at the now infamous research paper which linked a purported new syndrome with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.1 “There’s only 12 in this.”

That paper was published in the Lancet on 28 February 1998. It was retracted on 2 February 2010.2 Authored by Andrew Wakefield, John Walker-Smith, and 11 others from the Royal Free medical school, London, it reported on 12 developmentally challenged children,3 and triggered a decade long public health scare.

“Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated by the parents with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children,” began the paper’s “findings.” Adopting these claims as fact,4 its “results” section added: “In these eight children the average interval from exposure to first behavioural symptoms was 6.3 days (range 1-14).”

Mr 11, an American engineer, looked again at the paper: a five page case series of 11 boys and one girl, aged between 3 and 9 years. Nine children, it said, had diagnoses of “regressive” autism, and all but one were reported with “non-specific colitis.” The “new syndrome” brought these together, linking brain and bowel diseases. His son was the penultimate case.

Running his finger across the paper’s tables, over coffee in London, Mr 11 seemed reassured by his anonymised son’s age and other details. But then he pointed at table 2—headed “neuropsychiatric diagnosis”—and for a second time objected.

“That’s not true.”

More

[blondeatlast]

13. Interesting read--it looks like the good doctors got hold of a tort textbook

and got to work. Good science be damned--we've got a lawsuit to win... :puke:

[bonzotex]

15. k/r nt

[neverforget]

17. K & R

[progressoid]

18. But what about what Jenny McCarthy told me?

Golly, she's so purdy and funny. How could she be wrong? :shrug:


By the way, wasn't this "study" debunked a long time ago?

[Starry Messenger]

19. k&r!

[applegrove]

20. What a cruel thing to do to all those families. I hope somebody goes to jail.

[HuckleB]

22. That seems appropriate, but it won't happen.

:(

[HuckleB]

21. Kick...