tagged w/ Andrew Wakefield
-
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head at a constituent outreach event in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson on Saturday. In all, the gunman shot 18 people, killing 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.
Jamelle Bouie of TAPPED urges President Barack Obama to take up the issue of mental health care in his upcoming speech on the mass shooting. Several people who knew the alleged shooter came forward with stories of bizarre behavior and run-ins with campus police at his community college. College administrators ordered him to seek treatment before he returned to school, but he does not appear to have done so.
H. Clarke Romans of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona explained to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that mental health services in Arizona have been devastated by budget cuts.
In 2008 the state eliminated support services for all non-Medicaid behavioral health patients and stopped covering most brand-name psychiatric drugs. At least 28,000 Arizonans were affected. Arizonans with mental illnesses can expect even more cuts in the future as the state slashes spending in an attempt to address its budget shortfall.
In AlterNet, Adele Stan, argues that, while we don’t yet know the gunman’s motives, the right wing’s intensifying campaign of anti-government hysteria and violent rhetoric may have emboldened an already disturbed person:
Had the vitriolic rhetoric that today shapes Arizona’s political landscape (and, indeed, our national landscape) never come to call, Loughner may have found a different reason to go on a killing spree. But that vitriol does exist as a powerful prompt to the paranoid, and those who publicly deem war on the federal government a patriot’s duty should today be doing some soul-searching.
Reform repeal vote on hold
The House Republicans had scheduled a vote to repeal health care reform this week, but the vote has been postponed in the wake of the Giffords shooting. However, the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce threw its full weight behind the repeal effort on Tuesday, according to Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones. The Chamber is going back on its earlier pledge not to oppose health care reform outright.
CA insurer hikes rates by 59%
Nearly 200,000 policyholders in California are reeling from a 59% rate hike by Blue Shield, Brie Cadman reports for Change.org. According to the company, the increase was not due to health care reform, but rather to “increased utilization.” State insurance officials are reviewing the rate hike, but they can’t reverse it unless they find that Blue Shield fails to meet the legal medical loss ratio (percentage of premiums spent on medical care).
Reproductive rights in the states
Rachel Gould and Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute recap reproductive rights in the states at RH Reality Check. Last year, 44 states and the District of Columbia considered 950 repro rights-related measures on issues ranging from abortion to sex ed. By year’s end, 89 new laws had been enacted in 32 states and DC. Of these, 39 were abortion laws.
The vast majority of new abortion laws served to further restrict women’s access to abortion. The passage of the Affordable Care Act spurred several states to pass laws restricting insurance coverage for abortions. The District of Columbia’s decision to reinstate public funding was one of the few exceptions to the trend of restrictive new laws.
Autism/vaccine study based on “deliberate fraud”
The author of a discredited study purporting to link autism and vaccines schemed to profit from his tainted research from the very beginning, according to new research published in the British Medical Journal.
It turns out that the lead author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was secretly working on a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers when he published a study in The Lancet that appeared to show a link between vaccines and autism. We now know that Wakefield falsified the findings that sparked a global panic over the safety of childhood vaccines.
The journal retracted the paper last year. Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine.
Some observers think these revelations will finally put the debate over vaccines and autism to rest. Kristina Chew of Care2 is doubtful:
I am very sure that, even with all the facts, data, and evidence laid before them, those who believe that vaccines or something in vaccines caused or somehow ‘contributed’ to their child becoming autistic will stand by their claims, and by Wakefield. Some of these persons are my friends. They are parents, as am I, of autistic children.
Wakefield’s die hard supporters weren’t swayed by earlier revelations of shoddy research and unethical conduct. It seems unlikely that this new found conflict of interest will change their minds.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was... more
-
-
Almost exactly one year ago, on Jan. 28, 2010, Andrew Wakefield, the doctor whose 1998 research sparked international concern over whether childhood vaccines cause autism, was found guilty by a British panel of acting unethically in his research on autism. Shortly afterward, The Lancet, which originally published his findings, reviewed his original study and issued a complete retraction.
In May Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine in the United Kingdom. Then last week an editorial in the BMJ (formerly known as the British Medical Journal) called his actions not merely poor research but "deliberate fraud."
Just when it seems the scandal can't get any worse, it does.
According to new research published in today's BMJ, Wakefield's motive for the fraud was money -- and lots of it. Wakefield "planned secret businesses intended to make huge sums of money, in Britain and America, from his now-discredited allegations," according to a BMJ press release.
Conspiracy theorists are fond of saying "follow the money," and that's exactly what investigative journalist Brian Deer did.
In "Secrets of the MMR scare," the second part of a BMJ series of special reports on the Wakefield scandal, Deer shows how Wakefield's institution, the Royal Free Medical School in London, supported him as he sought to exploit the vaccine scare for his personal financial gain.
Deer reveals how Wakefield met with medical school managers to discuss joint business deals even while the first child to be fully investigated in his research was still in the hospital. Wakefield planned to make a fortune developing his own supposedly safer vaccines and diagnostic testing kits once the public's confidence in the safety of current vaccines was shaken.
According to Deer, Wakefield expected to earn over $40 million each year from selling his diagnostic kits -- a fact at odds with Wakefield's portrayal of himself as a selfless researcher whose only motivation was helping children harmed by vaccines.
Wakefield's research has been questioned for years, and many large-scale studies have found no evidence of any link between vaccines and autism.
Still, Wakefield remains a hero to a small group of conspiracy theorists who claim that the medical establishment is trying to silence this supposedly brave doctor who dared to speak the truth.
The parents of children who have been needlessly injured (or even killed) as a result of Wakefield's fraud may feel differently.
http://news.discovery.com/human/anti-vaccine-doctor-planned-to-profit-from-scare.htmlAlmost exactly one year ago, on Jan. 28, 2010, Andrew Wakefield, the doctor whose 1998... more
-
-
-
Retracted autism study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds
By the CNN Wire Staff
January 5, 2011 7:11 p.m. EST
Dr. Andrew Wakefield misrepresented or altered medical histories to bolster his 1998 study, an investigation found.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* British journal BMJ accuses Dr. Andrew Wakefield of faking data for his 1998 paper
* "The damage to public health continues" as a result of the autism-vaccine claim
* Vaccination rates dipped, measles cases increased after the study's publication
* The study was retracted and Wakefield lost his license in 2010
(CNN) -- A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an "elaborate fraud" that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday.
An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study -- and that there was "no doubt" Wakefield was responsible.
"It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors," Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor-in-chief, told CNN. "But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data."
Britain stripped Wakefield of his medical license in May 2010. Efforts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful Wednesday.
"Meanwhile, the damage to public health continues, fueled by unbalanced media reporting and an ineffective response from government, researchers, journals and the medical profession," BMJ states.
The now-discredited paper panicked many parents and led to a sharp drop in the number of children getting the vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella. Vaccination rates dropped sharply in Britain after its publication, falling as low as 80 percent by 2004. Measles cases have gone up sharply in the ensuing years.
In the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than in any other year since 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 90 percent of those infected had not been vaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, the CDC reported.
"But perhaps as important as the scare's effect on infectious disease is the energy, emotion and money that have been diverted away from efforts to understand the real causes of autism and how to help children and families who live with it," the BMJ editorial states.
Wakefield has been unable to reproduce his results in the face of criticism, and other researchers have been unable to match them. Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study in 2004 after learning he had had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers -- a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose. After years on controversy, the Lancet, the prestigious journal that originally published the research, retracted Wakefield's paper last February.
-- Unfortunately, (Wakefield's) core group of supporters is not going to let the facts dissuade their beliefs that MMR causes autism.
--Dr. Max Wiznitzer, pediatric neurologist
The series of articles launched Wednesday are investigative journalism, not results of a clinical study. The writer, Brian Deer, said Wakefield "chiseled" the data before him, "falsifying medical histories of children and essentially concocting a picture, which was the picture he was contracted to find by lawyers hoping to sue vaccine manufacturers and to create a vaccine scare."
According to BMJ, Wakefield received more than 435,000 pounds ($674,000) from the lawyers. Godlee said the study shows that of the 12 cases Wakefield examined in his paper, five showed developmental problems before receiving the MMR vaccine and three never had autism.
"It's always hard to explain fraud and where it affects people to lie in science," Godlee said. "But it does seem a financial motive was underlying this, both in terms of payments by lawyers and through legal aid grants that he received but also through financial schemes that he hoped would benefit him through diagnostic and other tests for autism and MMR-related issues."
Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, said the reporting "represents Wakefield as a person where the ends justified the means." But he said the latest news may have little effect on those families who still blame vaccines for their children's conditions.
"Unfortunately, his core group of supporters is not going to let the facts dissuade their beliefs that MMR causes autism," Wiznitzer said. "They need to be open-minded and examine the information as everybody else."
Wakefield's defenders include David Kirby, a journalist who has written extensively on autism. He told CNN that Wakefield not only has denied falsifying data, he has said he had no way to do so.
"I have known him for a number of years. He does not strike me as a charlatan or a liar," Kirby said. If the BMJ allegations are true, then Wakefield "did a terrible thing" -- but he added, "I personally find it hard to believe that he did that."
CNN's Elizabeth Cohen and Miriam Falco contributed to this report.Retracted autism study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds
By the... more
-
-
It's a 15 pager comic, so guessing it'll only draw in the attention of the passionate people on the MMR issue.
The comic follows the development of the MMR fear stories, while presenting the criticisms into Wakefields report like methods of research, the source of his funding and motivations.
So far the comic is popular among tweeters who already criticise the MMR fears, though if you're against the MMR vaccine does the comic affect this pov?It's a 15 pager comic, so guessing it'll only draw in the attention of the... more
-
-
This guest post is a commentary from Dr. Sanjeev K. Sriram, MD, MPH a member of the National Physicians Alliance. Dr. Sriram is discussing the decision by medical journal The Lancet to retract a controversial 1998 research paper suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
As a pediatrician and public health advocate, when I learned that the Lancet was finally retracting Andrew Wakefield’s bogus article that suggested a link between MMR vaccines and autism, I thought to myself, “Great, so we finally got rid of Wakefield’s bad apple, but what about the rest of the orchard?”
There is no doubt that Wakefield is one bad apple, and he must absolutely face the consequences for his disregard of basic ethics. According to the UK’s General Medical Council, Wakefield paid children 5 pounds at their birthday parties in exchange for their blood samples. By discrediting the old MMR, one of Wakefield’s side projects, a new vaccine he was inventing, would have made huge profits. The funding behind his “research” in the Lancet article was provided by a group of lawyers who just so happened to be suing the makers of MMR. These are more than just conflicts of interests, they are assaults on the trust between the general public and the scientific community. And for that, Wakefield deserves to have his medical license revoked, at the very least.
But I am weary of Wakefield becoming a scapegoat, which is often the result of too many authorities adopting the adage “one bad apple spoils the bunch.” Instead, I think we need to recognize that bad apples like Wakefield are the products of inattentive farming and inadequate sunlight in the medical-industrial research complex.
Though the scientific community may be frustrated every now and then by the mundane procedures of their institutional review boards (IRB’s), we need these ethics committees to be vigilant for the interests of patients and families. The pressure to produce profitable and popular answers to urgent questions is relentless. But in a world where the Supreme Court bestows corporations with the same rights as people, the scientific community must value the public’s trust above any individual researcher’s reputation, and above any industry’s revenue.
So in our justifiable criticism of Wakefield and the Lancet for their individual actions, I hope the medical establishment takes the time to realign its collective integrity.
This guest post is a commentary from Dr. Sanjeev K. Sriram, MD, MPH a... more
-
