Day: August 11, 2017

poztatt:

once-a-polecat:

aephobe:

wetwareproblem:

sfiddy:

ask-an-mra-anything:

quixotess:

smallapplegoat:

cupcakeinatorellie:

denyselfandfollowchrist:

cupcakeinatorellie:

Hey

Psstt

The guy who invented the theory that vaccines cause autism had his medical license revoked for it

thats ridiculous

they took it away because he came up with a seemingly plausible theory?

They took it away because other scientists have been unable to reproduce his results, his results were made up, he didn’t even get approved by an ethics committee, and now he’s risking the health and lives of a whole bunch of people

It’s not just that he came to incorrect conclusions, he falsified data on purpose, apparently because he had patented a related medical test and stood to make a lot of money off people using his test instead of vaccinating.

It’s crazy how this one person, in a study of only twelve children, gained so much traction in the world. He put this lie out there—and it was a lie, not just interpreting data incorrectly—and now it doesn’t even matter that he’s been proven totally false. Years of effort to reestablish the truth can’t undo the lie once it’s out there in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people believe that lie, and actual children are getting sick and dying because of it.

This is a really troubling aspect of how human minds work, and it’s something conservative politicians take advantage of on a regular basis. If you just say that “well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does“ is provide abortions, it doesn’t matter how often people recite the objective truth that abortions are a tiny fraction of Planned Parenthood services. You can say the truth 1000 times for every one time the lie is repeated, and thousands of people will still trust the lie.

I’d never heard this before, and it’s actually really helpful information to have, so thanks. Here is a scientific article by the American Academy of Pediatrics explaining the flaws in Wakefield’s research and briefly summarizing four studies that refuted the fraudulent claims. Here is an article by the editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal calling him a fraud in no uncertain terms. Here is the first part of a nine-part investigative journalistic series, published in the BMJ, uncovering his fraud.  And the General Medical Council conclusions that stripped Wakefield of his clinical credentials can be found here.

I’m honestly so mad right now reading about this guy. People are dying of measles right now because vaccinations fell off so sharply, and those deaths can be laid at the door of this man.

This man is a mass murderer

VACCINATE YOUR KIDS.
THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT VACCINATING HEALTHY CHILDREN.

NONE.

Your regular reminder that the entire anti-vaxx movement is founded and predicated on hatred and devaluation for autistic people and autistic lives. Never forget this, and remember to talk about it when you’re talking about anti-vaxxers.

funny that parents would rather their kid die than “possibly get autism” from vaccines 🤔

I have talked about this before, but I’m going to point it out again.  Not only did he falsify data, but he conducted unethical medical research on children.  

Andrew Wakefield was found guilty of professional misconduct by the UK General Medical Council.  I’ve worked in research for a pediatric hospital, and two of the GMC findings constitute major violations of professional ethics for research on children here in the US (I’m pretty sure the UK is similar since these findings formed the basis for revoking his medical license and retracting his Lancet paper.

1. He performed invasive medical procedures with potential serious side-effects on autistic children contrary to the children’s clinical interests.  I.E. the colonoscopies, biopsies and lumbar punctures he performed on these children were of no benefit to them and were done strictly for research purposes.  All procedures done for research purposes only should be approved by an ethics board known as an institutional review board, which ensures that parents are given enough information about the research and negative side effects of the procedure (adverse events) so that they can give informed consent.  Wakefield did not do this.  He sidestepped the ethical review process.  We have no idea if any children were harmed by this, because there was no tracking of adverse events, because there was no review board involved.
2. He performed invasive medical procedures on “normal” non-autistic children with no clinical benefit to them, no ethical oversight and no informed consent.  In fact, these were children he was not even seeing as their doctor, he simply asked parents at his child’s birthday party if they would allow a blood draw on their children for £5.  Now, a blood draw is WAY less invasive, painful and has less potential to cause injury.  But it’s still an invasive medical procedure done for zero reason and without informed consent of their parents.  

Basically, Andrew Wakefield is an unethical asshole, on par with the people who ran the Tuskegee study.  

Working in research I’mma point out a thing in this that people outside might not understand.

Informed consent means not only that the person says yes, but they also know what they are saying yes to. So a person walks up to you at a kid’s party and asks if they can, for five bucks, take a blood sample.  They don’t explain why.  Just “oh, I’m doing a study” is not an explanation.

Here, in the work done in my organization, we need to confirm the people know what they are consenting to, and what future uses of information/material they are consenting to.  “We’re going to use this in THIS research to look at THIS issue”.  

Often I see conversations wherein people misunderstand informed consent as “they said yes”, not understanding that they need to understand what they are saying yes to.