In 1998 then Doctor Andrew Wakefield published a study in the medical journal The Lancet that claimed that the MMR vaccine causes autism, which was later found to be not true but still lead to a worldwide increase of measles cases, and in the end destroyed Wakefield's career.
There are many things that I've noticed about Andrew Wakefield (none of them good) and I've come up with about five different things.
So here are five things I've noticed about Andrew Wakefield:
5. He committed a terrible fraud.
I'm sure that everybody is aware that his aforementioned "study" was retracted in 2010 by The Lancet after a long investigation by the British Medical Journal and journalist Brian Deer. The investigation showed that not only had he manipulated the data in his study, it also found that he had patented his own measles vaccine a year before publishing his study, and that the study was funded by lawyers who sued vaccine manufactures.
To better understand how Wakefield manipulated the data in his study, please watch this video by Youtube science vlogger C0nc0rdance:
As awful as his fraud was it would not have been as bad as it became if it wasn't for the fact that so many people took his study seriously and decided not to vaccinate their children because of it. This has directly resulted in the world wide increases of measles and mumps infections and infections from other diseases as well because many people were not vaccinating themselves or their children due to fear of any vaccines, a fear that was brought on by Wakefield's study, which has also lead to numerous unnecessary deaths.
As for Wakefield himself his fraudulent study lead to his own career being ruined and his name being struck off the UK medical register, making it illegal for him to practice medicine in the United Kingdom.
4. He turned parents in paranoid liars.
One of the direct results of Andrew Wakefield's study is that many parents have become paranoid of vaccines and have chosen not to vaccinate their children despite being legally obligated to do so in many places before they enter them into school, and the fact that it's just good common sense to do so.
Inorder to keep their children in school while at the same time keep them un-vaccinated parents will often lie to health officials and school officials about either their religious or philosophical beliefs inorder to get a vaccine exemption for their child.
Other things that some parents will do inorder to fool health and school officials is that they will go to a fake doctor (ex. Naturopath, Homeopath) and get them to write up an exemption from getting vaccinate for their children, or write up they vaccinate the child when really they didn't.
These types of actions are dangerous not only to the children whose parents did not vaccinate them, but also to anyone that couldn't get vaccinated for a legitimate medical reason, or those who the vaccine didn't immunize them for some reason.
3. He's become the Lord Voldemort of science and medicine.
Much like Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter book series Andrew Wakefield's name is something you don't use in a discussion about science and medicine, unless he is used as an example for when bad or fraudulent research is taken to seriously by the public.
As for the scientific and medical communities any research done by him before his 1998 autism/MMR vaccine "study" is somewhat taboo, and is usually avoided in research unless necessary. Any research done by him after his 1998 autism/MMR vaccine "study" is to never be used, unless you never want to be taken seriously and risk your career.
Also, you don't compare a doctor or scientist to Andrew Wakefield as doing so would be considered a huge insult, unless their research was sloppy or fraudulent and caused peoples' deaths.
2. He created alot of waste.
While the dramatic increase in vaccine preventable infections has been the most obvious result of Wakefield's fraudulent study, another thing his study has done is wasted alot of money.
The amount of money wasted because of Wakefield's study is probably within the hundreds of millions of dollars, and possibly within the billions. These costs include health care and hospital stays for people (especially children) who got an infection from diseases that are vaccine preventable.
Other costs include lost wages for parents who had to stop working inorder to take care of their sick children, and wasted money (not to mention man hours) to disprove and try to undo the damage caused by Wakefield's "research", money that could have used for more legitimate and better research projects.
Then there are the costs of funerals that can go into the thousands per funeral, and with thousands having died because of his research, the costs really adds up, but is overshadowed by the amount of pain caused by those deaths, which is a cost that is immeasurable.
1. He refuses to accept responsibility for what he's done.
Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 autism/MMR vaccine "study" has been described as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". So far he has never accepted any responsibility for the damage done by his "study", nor has he faded from the public light.
To this day he continues to claim that his study was accurate, and that he didn't commit fraud, and that there is a conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies and public health officials to discredit him, and that they were paying bloggers to so, and also inflate the reports of deaths from measles.
In 2012 Wakefield attempted to sue Brian Deer, the British Medical Journal and it's editor Fiona Godlee for defamation, which was described by many as being frivolous, and was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.
To this day Wakefield continues to work in autism research and claim the title of "doctor", both of which are considered to be highly inappropriate for him to do, and that many have said he should stop doing. He currently lives and does all of this in the United States because legally he can not in the United Kingdom.
Showing posts with label MMR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MMR. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
5 Things I've noticed about... vaccines
Vaccines are a medical invention that has been around for a very long time, the very first one being invented by Edward Jenner in 1796 for small pox.
There are alot of things that have been said about vaccines, and taking a look at these claims, as well as the facts about vaccines, I've come up with fives things about them.
So here are five things I've noticed about vaccines:
5. They cause extinctions.
Most people probably don't know this, or do but rarely if ever think about it is that vaccines kill things and can very easily lead to the extinction of some species. Infact vaccines have already caused the extinction of one species, small pox.
Vaccines are also very well on their way to causing the extinction of polio, and could in due time and with enough people getting vaccinated, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, and a variety of other well known diseases that can kill people, particularly young children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems.
Don't these viruses deserve to exist? I mean true these viruses have caused the deaths of millions, plus have left countless others disfigured and disabled, and other than to do all of that have no real purpose to exist, and are still debated over whether or not they are lifeforms, but regardless of all that you have to ask yourself, don't these useless and dangerous lifeforms/not lifeforms have a right to exist?
4. They prevent our children from having the childhood memories of our parents and grandparents.
My parents and grandparents didn't have the vaccines like my generation and my generation's children have, and I can't help but think of what kind of childhood memories might have been taken away because of vaccines.
Some of those memories I imagine would include attending the funeral of a classmate or family member that died from an infectious disease, or having to help another fellow classmate get around because they have trouble walking or are in a wheelchair due to polio, and even having to be rushed to the hospital because I contracted measles and my temperature got really high.
Yes, because of vaccines I have none of these childhood memories, nor does most of the people in my generation as well, but thanks to people like Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy, as well as numerous anti-vaccination websites, those childhood memories of the past generations are making a comeback.
3. They make people paranoid.
Vaccines make people paranoid, this is a fact.
The vaccines themselves don't actually make people paranoid, but just the thought of injecting a dead or weakened virus that's inside a mixture of chemicals that in high enough doses could be deadly, although are in low enough doses that they would be safe to take individually several times over and not harm a person, is enough to scare some people to not get themselves or their children vaccinated.
Now you couple this with something like the Wakefield paper, a paper was publish in the UK medical journal The Lancet and authored by then Dr. Andrew Wakefield that claimed that vaccines cause autism, a claim that has since long been discredited and debunked, and the paper itself was retracted due to fraud, as well as Wakefield being stripped of his medical license due to that fraud and gross ethics violations, and in the end you'll have a person to paranoid to do something which almost every medical doctor in the world says a person should do.
Maybe it's not really vaccines that cause people to become paranoid of them. Maybe it's bad and made-up information combined with a lack of willingness to do real research and a mistrust of pharmaceutical companies that cause people to become paranoid of vaccines?
2. They affect industries.
Vaccines do affect several industries and in big ways too!
The health care industry for one is greatly affected by vaccines. The reason for this is because when a vaccine makes someone immune from disease it greatly decreases their chance of contracting said disease which could require an extensive stay in a hospital and/or hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in medical treatments.
And lets not get started on all the iron lung and leg brace manufactures that have taken a major hit in profits due to the polio vaccine...
Then there are ofcourse the coffin manufactures who have had a sharp decline in the sale of children and infants' coffins due to the fact children and infants are not dying as often as they use to because they aren't contracting the deadly diseases that would usually kill them before they reached adulthood thanks to vaccines.
1. It's the greatest medical invention ever.
All joking and satire aside vaccines are without a doubt the greatest medical invention of all time.
Vaccines are safe, cheap, reliable, rarely have any negative side effects (and even those are not severe most of the time) but almost always has the positive side effect of making a person immune from a disease, and can wipe out some diseases, which it already has with small pox, and is well on it's way with polio and in the future may do so with other diseases like measles and mumps.
The money saved due to vaccines for just health care alone has been in the billions, and the lives saved due to vaccines may be immeasurable.
With the exception of legitimate health reasons there is no reason to not get vaccinated, nor is there any reason for a parent to not vaccinate their child.
To not do so simply irresponsible, and in some cases, criminal.
There are alot of things that have been said about vaccines, and taking a look at these claims, as well as the facts about vaccines, I've come up with fives things about them.
So here are five things I've noticed about vaccines:
5. They cause extinctions.
Most people probably don't know this, or do but rarely if ever think about it is that vaccines kill things and can very easily lead to the extinction of some species. Infact vaccines have already caused the extinction of one species, small pox.
Vaccines are also very well on their way to causing the extinction of polio, and could in due time and with enough people getting vaccinated, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, and a variety of other well known diseases that can kill people, particularly young children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems.
Don't these viruses deserve to exist? I mean true these viruses have caused the deaths of millions, plus have left countless others disfigured and disabled, and other than to do all of that have no real purpose to exist, and are still debated over whether or not they are lifeforms, but regardless of all that you have to ask yourself, don't these useless and dangerous lifeforms/not lifeforms have a right to exist?
4. They prevent our children from having the childhood memories of our parents and grandparents.
My parents and grandparents didn't have the vaccines like my generation and my generation's children have, and I can't help but think of what kind of childhood memories might have been taken away because of vaccines.
Some of those memories I imagine would include attending the funeral of a classmate or family member that died from an infectious disease, or having to help another fellow classmate get around because they have trouble walking or are in a wheelchair due to polio, and even having to be rushed to the hospital because I contracted measles and my temperature got really high.
Yes, because of vaccines I have none of these childhood memories, nor does most of the people in my generation as well, but thanks to people like Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy, as well as numerous anti-vaccination websites, those childhood memories of the past generations are making a comeback.
3. They make people paranoid.
Vaccines make people paranoid, this is a fact.
The vaccines themselves don't actually make people paranoid, but just the thought of injecting a dead or weakened virus that's inside a mixture of chemicals that in high enough doses could be deadly, although are in low enough doses that they would be safe to take individually several times over and not harm a person, is enough to scare some people to not get themselves or their children vaccinated.
Now you couple this with something like the Wakefield paper, a paper was publish in the UK medical journal The Lancet and authored by then Dr. Andrew Wakefield that claimed that vaccines cause autism, a claim that has since long been discredited and debunked, and the paper itself was retracted due to fraud, as well as Wakefield being stripped of his medical license due to that fraud and gross ethics violations, and in the end you'll have a person to paranoid to do something which almost every medical doctor in the world says a person should do.
Maybe it's not really vaccines that cause people to become paranoid of them. Maybe it's bad and made-up information combined with a lack of willingness to do real research and a mistrust of pharmaceutical companies that cause people to become paranoid of vaccines?
2. They affect industries.
Vaccines do affect several industries and in big ways too!
The health care industry for one is greatly affected by vaccines. The reason for this is because when a vaccine makes someone immune from disease it greatly decreases their chance of contracting said disease which could require an extensive stay in a hospital and/or hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in medical treatments.
And lets not get started on all the iron lung and leg brace manufactures that have taken a major hit in profits due to the polio vaccine...
Then there are ofcourse the coffin manufactures who have had a sharp decline in the sale of children and infants' coffins due to the fact children and infants are not dying as often as they use to because they aren't contracting the deadly diseases that would usually kill them before they reached adulthood thanks to vaccines.
1. It's the greatest medical invention ever.
All joking and satire aside vaccines are without a doubt the greatest medical invention of all time.
Vaccines are safe, cheap, reliable, rarely have any negative side effects (and even those are not severe most of the time) but almost always has the positive side effect of making a person immune from a disease, and can wipe out some diseases, which it already has with small pox, and is well on it's way with polio and in the future may do so with other diseases like measles and mumps.
The money saved due to vaccines for just health care alone has been in the billions, and the lives saved due to vaccines may be immeasurable.
With the exception of legitimate health reasons there is no reason to not get vaccinated, nor is there any reason for a parent to not vaccinate their child.
To not do so simply irresponsible, and in some cases, criminal.
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