About time - talk about doing a lot of harm with shoddy science
From the
Wall Street Journal:
U.K. Bans Doctor Who Linked Autism to Vaccine
A U.K. medical regulator revoked the license of the doctor who first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, heated debate over the safety of vaccines.
Ending a nearly three-year hearing, Britain's General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield guilty of "serious professional misconduct" in the way he carried out his research in the late 1990s. The council struck his name from the U.K.'s medical register.
The same body in January concluded that Dr. Wakefield's research was flawed, saying that he had presented his work in an "irresponsible and dishonest" way and shown "callous disregard" for the children in his study.
Shortly after that January ruling, the British medical journal that first published Dr. Wakefield's study, the Lancet, retracted it. His central claim�that there could be a link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine�has largely been discredited.
Dr. Wakefield couldn't immediately be reached to comment Monday. In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. on Monday, he said he would appeal the GMC's decision. "Efforts to discredit and silence me through the GMC process have provided a screen to shield the government from exposure on the MMR vaccine scandal," Dr. Wakefield said, according to the BBC.
The guy had an ax to grind, did a stunningly shoddy analysis of a sample of 12 (way to small) and the Journal later retracted the paper but this didn't stop the publicity and parents unknowing actions placing their children at risk. The article mentions that in 1995, the non-vaccination rate was 0.77% while in 2000, that had risen to 2.1% - one in every fifty.
Glad to see that he will not be practicing Medicine anymore... Of course, now the moke will be a martyr to the Big Pharma companies that are trying to ram these vaccines down our throats and
yet another child will die.
Posted by DaveH at May 24, 2010 8:55 PM