Dr. Andrew Wakefield has lost his medical license. He is the doctor that originally supported the link between autism and vaccines. Since his study, no one else has been able to recreate his results. There have also been people that claim that his research results were influenced by him being a paid professional witness in lawsuits involving vaccines.
He has also been criticized for how he obtained blood samples from children at a birthday party. His original report was published in 1998 in the Lancet Journal. In February, it was retracted. Dr. Wakefield still believes that vaccines are a causal factor in autism cases.
In an exclusive interview on the Today show, he states that he believes that the government put pressure on the medical board to take away his license. He also says that the American government accepts the fact that vaccines are linked to autism, and that is why they have been secretly settling cases out of court, since 1991. However, the government says that they do not believe that anymore.
Dr. Wakefield says that he will continue his work. “Callous Disregard“, his book that is now available in stores, gives his side. I haven’t read it, yet.
What do you think?
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Comments (10)
i don't know enough to form an opinion. Hard to say.
His original motive was that he was paid over $100,000 by the parents of the majority of children (there were only 12 in total) to prove there was a link between mmr and autism. This conflict of interest he never disclosed but pretended that it was independent scientific research.
Another motive was to discredit the three-in-one vaccine so he could replace it with the one he had developed and that would have been very big business. He denied this for years until the receipt for his patent application for his new vaccine was made public. http://briandeer.com/wakefield/vaccine-patent.htm
Wakefield put back the research into the true cause(s) of autism by years. All that time and money gone to waste.
Here are all the links to the investigation:http://briandeer.com/mmr/st-mmr-reports.htm
He lost his license because he was doing research inappropriately. If no one can replicate the study, then the results are probably not accurate. That's what science is all about.
You're saying he was censored? The open criticism of his methodology and attempts to replicate his results suggest no such thing. Retracting his article because it didn't hold up under scientific scrutiny doesn't qualify as censorship.
@Crossed_Out_Name@xanga - I think, perhaps, "censored" is supposed to read, "censured" which would make sense.
i have a hard time believing it's all some conspiracy against him. you mean to tell me not one other scientist had a heart and decided to genuinely examine the validity behind his claims? if there was any number of people replicating his findings i might be inclined to wonder, but when every last scientist who tries finds no connection it's way more believable that "Dr." Wakefield was paid off than that every last one fo those other scientists was paid off
In the words of Daffy Duck, quack, quack.
Autism is unfortunate but there is no link between it and childhood vaccines. Get your children vaccinated. If you do not, you are endangering the overall health of the entire world. Parents who do not vaccinate their children against nearly eradicated diseases and then cause outbreaks in places where there was previously no risk should be fined, or worse. It is truly a crime.