Independent voices from the TWT Communities
As the proud grandfather of three beautiful grand- daughters, I have closely followed news stories about autism, a developmental disability in children that seems to have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The claim that there is a connection between the vaccination of children and the onset of autism has troubled me, as it has my sons and their wives, the mothers of my grandkids - 7-year-old Riley, 5-year-old Kate, and Cameron, age 7 months.
Health officials struggling to contain a measles outbreak that's hit hard in Minneapolis' large Somali community are running into resistance from parents who fear the vaccine could give their children autism.
Tom and Patsy Morris wanted what was best for their son, Nikolas, who was facing a battery of critical immunizations. Like most parents, the Morrises relied on information from the Web to assess risks associated with vaccinating children. After being alarmed by Internet statements and news accounts like those based on Andrew Wakefield's false claim that vaccines cause autism, they decided against completing Nikolas' pertussis vaccination. A year later, he nearly died from whooping cough.
The United Kingdom's prestigious medical journal BMJ last week released what appears to be damning evidence about a 1998 study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and colleagues in which they saw an association with a childhood vaccination and onset of autism in eight previously normal children.
This week more shame was heaped upon the discredited British researcher whose work gave rise to the childhood-vaccines-cause-autism movement, as a prominent medical journal published a report that the man had faked his data. But will it make a difference?
The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.
The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.
A 1998 British study that launched an international fear that certain childhood vaccinations can cause autism has been labeled an "elaborate fraud" in a medical journal.
The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.
Reached at home in Texas, Wakefield, who was banned from practicing medicine in his native Great Britain and whose claims are contrary to what prevailing established medical research shows about vaccine and autism, said: "There was no fraud and to use this and to use me as a poster child of fraud really compounds that error."
I've read the news stories about British researcher Andrew Wakefield, who claims to have found a connection between autism and the vaccine used to immunize children from measles, mumps and rubella.
