JISHOU, HUNAN — I’ve been meaning to blog about the anti-vaccination movement, but haven’t had the time to develop a thorough entry. Now I don’t have to; someone with much better creds has done it for me.
Here’s the link: eSkeptic magazine. The author is Harriet Hall, MD, who dispassionately debunks the Holy Trinity of the anti-vax movement: Andrew Wakefield, thimerosal and the Jenny McCarthy/Jim Carrey road show.
About 10 years ago, Wakefield, a British doctor, published journal articles and argued publicly that the MMR (measle, mumps, rubella) vaccination caused autism. The data in the articles was fraudulent, and his conclusions lies, but that hasn’t stopped the anti-vax crowd’s referring to his work as “proof” vaccinations cause autism. Nor has the revelation that Wakefield was in the pocket of lawyers trying to sue vaccine manufacturers for causing their clients’ children’s autism.
In fact, Brits not getting the MMR vaccination for their kids — undoubtedly due to Wakefield’s self-serving anti-MMR publicity — has created a resurgence in measles cases in the UK.
Thimerosal is a benign mercury compound that used to be in vaccines in tiny amounts as a preservative. After the mercury-causes-autism scares of the 1990s, mercury compounds were removed from vaccines. Autism rates, instead of falling, rose. Anti-vaccination spokesmouths still claim vaccines cause autism, but now allege other ingredients are the culprit.
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