On Friday the verdict came out about his conduct and the General Medical Council is now considering "whether Dr Wakefield's behaviour, and that of his colleagues, amounts to serious professional misconduct and then if any sanctions should be imposed, such as striking them off the medical register."
Photo Andrew Zuckerman and Wired Article
11 comments:
Hadn't Wakefield also been hired by the 12 subjects? I thought he'd been trying to find some connection between the MMR vaccine and GI disease but had come up short when these 12 patients fell into his lap.
One of the articles stated that he used children that were attending his own child's birthday party and paid them each 5 pounds for 'participating' (i.e. providing blood samples).
Yes he also stated that there was a link between Crohns and MMR (hospital pathologists stated they found no link yet he published that they'd reported the opposite).
Those two examples are the main reasons he was found to be unethical and that he used gross negligence in his reporting. Though I would also say The Lancet is partly to blame as well for publishing his research to begin with!
Of course they've retracted the publication but it's like the story of the feathers being scattered from the roof top. You can't go and gather up all the feathers once they've been released. So much fear and misinformation out there now that will never be corrected/understood/explained, especially with Oprah on the band wagon now too.
I wish they would put an article about this guy on the cover of people magazine instead of jenny mccarthy- then maybe some of this stupidity would end...
Cate--EXACTLY. Yes. Could not agree more.
Hence my title for this post--unless you actually are a nerd and follow medical news this whole story would quietly unfold and go away without any attention being brought to it. Yet the ramifications of what he's done will live on and on and on...
I read this and literally wept.
I saw the article in the Evening Standard here and it was a quarter page blurb with a boring photo of an older guy. I thought to myself, "why the hell isn't this getting the same press F*face McCarthy got with her unfortunate child and grasping at straws?
I thought alot about this with the swine flu campaign this year, as literally hundreds of health professionals refused to get a perfectly safe (if unnecessary) vaccine, because they'd "heard somewhere" that vaccines are bad for you.
Yeah, they've been really bad for the millions of children who've grown into adults because of receiving them. Grrrr... I could rant on and on. Public health gets the short end of the stick, because a few dumbasses sensationalize their statistically insignificant personal experience.
Anyway. That's enough about that. I'll cut it short like all the major media outlets.
I say strike him off.
I take most of my health advice from porn stars...I find it safer than relying on well-done science.
Keet--You know that vaccinations are something very close to my heart (partly why I get so enraged over all of this...)
The photograph over my desk is my grandfather talking with one of his longest surviving Polio patients, she's in an iron lung.
The tide is not going to start to change until one of Tom Cruise's kids ends up in an iron lung.
BINY--I find the larger the breast augmentation, the larger the I.Q.
There is a nice detailed analysis of the misbehavior at Respectful Insolence - The martyrdom of St. Andy
I find the larger the breast augmentation, the larger the I.Q.
With the right surgeon, you could get one in an I cup size and one in a Q cup size. The audience might not appreciate it as much, or they might prefer the left or the right, but tastes change. It's only a matter of time until this is quite as fashionable as bumper sticker excuses for avoiding vaccines. My fashion sense is perfect.
RM--Thanks for the link. I've been receiving many emails/FB links lately with regard to this story and each once makes me grind my molars into finer and finer dust.
Please tell me there is no such thing as an anti-vaccine bumpersticker??!!!
And thanks for giving more plausibility to my IQ assumption. :P
Please tell me there is no such thing as an anti-vaccine bumpersticker??!!!
When they talk, they speak with all of the depth that would fit on a bumper sticker.
Green the vaccines.
Too many, too soon.
I wonder if they would be able to spell the second one correctly.
The first one is just a bit scary. If the vaccine is green, that is likely to be a sign of contamination. Since they oppose any kind of additive to prevent bacterial growth, maybe that is what they mean. Prioritizing risks would not be one of their strong points. On the other hand, diazepam syringes have a bit of a green tint to them, even when brand new. Maybe they just want them to be made in Ireland, or an Islamic country.
There was a video of Jenny McCarthy explaining the way the immune system works (at least in her mind). It was so bad that I couldn't even laugh at it. Gertrude Stein could have been describing Jenny McCarthy's brain, when she said, There's no there there.
Whether they actually make bumper stickers, I do not know. I would not be surprised, since they can make money selling stuff like that to their minions.
Ugh....more evidence of the decline of civilization as we know it....
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