Linkage

• How Bad Could the Private-Credit Crisis Get? Just Look at 1929. (Barron's) From the very definition of conventional economic thinking.
• Aluminum-Adsorbed Vaccines and Chronic Diseases in Childhood: A Nationwide Cohort Study: (Annals of Internal Medicine) There is no association between the use of aluminum adjuvants and childhood diseases.
• DuckDuckGo Is Selling Anti Pervert Glasses That Contain Zero AI, Cameras, or Even Electronics Whatsoever (Futurism) Sunglasses.
• Pluralistic: Google is a scammer’s paradise (Pluralistic) Harming their own users is profitable.
• Association Between First MMR Vaccination Before Age 2 Years and Childhood Autism in a U.S. EHR Cohort of 2.5 Million Children (Ovid) Spoiler, there is no association.   
• Ozempic Could Fight Addiction Too – Scientists Finally Know How (SciTech Daily) This whole class of drugs is getting more and more interesting.
• Earth’s molten core suddenly reversed direction — and scientists don’t know why (ScienceDaily) This is end of the world stuff.
• Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley (Organization Science) The culture of Silly-Con Valley has been larcenous since at least the end of the last century.

A nice video primer on the circular payment scheme fraud that undergirds AI:

So the Senate Republicans Have Limits

It appears that in the midst of a rapidly spreading measles outbreak, The Trump administration has pulled Dave Weldon to be head of the Center for Disease Control because they lack the votes, which means that at least 4 Republicans are not willing to support this moron.

The White House abruptly abandoned the nomination of Dave Weldon, the former Florida congressman who questioned vaccine safety, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday amid concerns he could not be confirmed by the Senate.

The move leaves the Trump administration in search of a leader for the agency — which formulates vaccine policy recommendations — as a growing measles outbreak highlights criticism of the administration’s public health response.

The Senate health committee announced Weldon’s nomination had been pulled shortly before he was scheduled to testify at a hearing Thursday morning.

The withdrawal of Weldon’s nomination marks a rare setback for a Trump administration pick. The Senate has confirmed every controversial choice brought to a full vote on the floor to date.

Weldon, a 71-year-old doctor who left Congress in 2009, drew scrutiny for his longtime promotion of the false claim that vaccines can cause autism.

Yeah, but they still voted for JFK, Jr.

Osama, Take Me Now

37% of dog owners in the United States are vaccine hesitant because they are concerned about doggy autism.

I understand the concern.  A lot of dogs are completely non-verbal and engage in stimming behavior like chasing their own tails and pursuing tennis balls.  (Not)

The anti-vaccine rhetoric that dogged COVID-19 responses has now gone to the dogs, literally.

A little more than half of surveyed dog owners—53 percent—questioned the safety, efficacy, and/or necessity of vaccinating their beloved four-legged family members. The study, published recently in the journal Vaccine, involved a nationally representative group of 2,200 American adults, of which 42 percent (924) made up the analyzed subgroup of dog owners. Overall, the findings add to concern that the anti-vaccine sentiments that flared amid the pandemic have fanned out broadly, undermining even routine childhood vaccinations.

That concern was supported by the new study, which found that the dog owners who espoused "canine vaccine hesitancy," or CVH, were more likely to embrace misinformation and falsehoods linked to human vaccines. And those anti-vaccine beliefs were potent. Responses from the CVH dog owners suggested that 56 percent opposed mandatory vaccination against rabies, a 100 percent fatal condition.

In a particularly striking finding, the study found that 37 percent of all dog owners believed vaccines could cause their pets to develop cognitive problems, such as "canine/feline autism."

To be clear, vaccines do not cause autism. This falsehood has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked for years; the plethora of data on vaccine safety shows absolutely no link between vaccination and autism. Further, "canine autism" (aka "canine dysfunctional behavior" on the Internet) is not a real condition. A veterinarian who was not involved with the new study confirmed to Ars that it is not an established diagnosis, though dogs can suffer behavioral and cognitive disorders unrelated to human autism.

Nevertheless, anti-vaccine bunkum has clearly metastasized to our furry companions. The lead author of the study, Matthew Motta, told Ars over email that he and his co-authors expected some vaccine hesitancy among pet owners but still found the results "pretty surprising."

Not surprising at all, to quote H.L. Mencken, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

Bobby Kennedy, Jr., Would You Please Dine on Excrement and then Expire?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. took his antivax sh%$ show to Samoa, where 42 people, including 22 infants, have now died of measles.

Kennedy is a murderer:^*

It was probably inevitable that the success of the anti-vaccination movement would eventually lead to an outbreak with substantial casualties. It has now happened in Samoa, where 48 people so far have died from measles, including 22 infants. Public health officials do not believe the outbreak has peaked, and expect those numbers to rise, possibl considerably. Why is the outbreak (which has hit much of Oceania in recent months) particularly bad and particularly deadly in Samoa? 

Yep, drops in vaccination rates?

And who was front and center of this?  Bobby, Jr.

As you might expect, the decline in vaccination rates wasn’t due solely to domestic causes; it was assisted by a well-resourced global movement, with some familiar faces.

Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a nephew of President John F. Kennedy, visited the country in June, appearing next to officials at Samoan independence celebrations. His visit was “for a program that is not government-related,” an official in the prime minister’s department told Samoan news media at the time.

Kennedy has asserted that vaccines cause autism, a claim disproved by extensive research. Members of the Kennedy family have publicly criticized him for helping “spread dangerous misinformation.”

An Instagram photo shows Kennedy embracing the Australian Samoan anti-vaccine activist Taylor Winterstein in Samoa on June 4. “I am deeply honored to have been in the presence of a man I believe is, can and will change the course of history,” Winterstein wrote in the caption, adding hashtags #makinginformedchoices #investigatebeforeyouvaccinate.

………

As appalling and reckless as their advocacy is in their home countries, it’s considerably moreso in lower income countries like Samoa, where measles fatality rates are likely to be considerably higher, as we’re seeing here.

But don't worry, antivaxxers are sending vitamins, so everything is cool.

What the f%$# is wrong with these folk?

^*FWIW, Charlie, my son on the autism spectrum, spotted by Sharon when he was about 3 days old, well before any vaccines, agrees with description of Kennedy as a murderer.

So, It's Down to One Guy

It turns out that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is responsible for most of the anti-vax ads on Facebook.

I always knew that he was a nut-job about this, but I underestimated the depth of his influence:

Just two organizations were responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook before the social media giant restricted such content in March of this year, according to a November 13 study in the journal Vaccine.

Of 145 anti-vaccine Facebook advertisements that ran between May 31, 2017 and February 22, 2019, the World Mercury Project and a group called Stop Mandatory Vaccination together ran 54% of them. 

The World Mercury Project, which ran the most ads of any single source, is an organization closely aligned with the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense. Both are spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer turned prolific peddler of dangerous anti-vaccine misinformation. He and his organizations promote conspiracy theories about vaccine safety, including the roundly debunked claim that safe, life-saving immunizations are linked to autism. More recently, Kennedy has become a prominent opponent of laws aimed at increasing vaccination rates among school children.

Stop Mandatory Vaccination is a for-profit venture run by a man named Larry Cook. He, too, trumpets vaccine misinformation and fear-mongers. On Facebook and other platforms, Cook runs advertisements and campaigns making dubious links between the vaccines and tragic baby deaths. One such ad was banned by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority last year. The regulator determined the ad to be "misleading," "unsubstantiated," and "likely to cause undue distress." In other instances, he has claimed that the pro-vaccine medical community is covering up the "slaughter" of children.

These folks need to be shunned by all people of good conscience, and a fraud investigation or three might be good too.

Welcome to the Third World

The cases of Measels have skyrocketed in the past few months.

Thank the anti-vaccine movement:

The US has seen more reports of measles cases in the first three months of 2019 than in the whole of last year, health officials said this week.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday reported 387 measles cases so far in 2019, 15 more than the total number of cases last year. The numbers make 2019 the second-worst year for measles since the United States declared itself measles-free nearly two decades ago.

………

The number of measles cases typically declines in the summer months, but experts worry the early 2019 numbers indicate the disease is on the rise.

“My concern is that this is trending the wrong way,” said Dr Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and author of the book Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.

“It’s getting worse, it’s not getting better,” he added.

………

Dr Barbara McAneny, president of the American Medical Association, cautioned against exemptions to immunizations “solely as a matter of convenience or misinformation” because they increase the risk for vulnerable people, such as children who are too young to be vaccinated or children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, such as cancer.

“Getting vaccinated not only keeps individuals from becoming ill with the measles but also helps prevent further spread to loved ones, neighbors, co-workers and others in close contact,” McAneny said.

What has happened is that a bunch of selfish idiots have been relying on herd immunity, and the inevitable has occurred:  there is now a sufficient number of unvaccinated people that herd immunity is no longer effective.

Authorities need to get seriously medieval on the anti-vaxxers.

If RFK Were Alive, He'd Kick His Ass

Robert F. Kennedy, JR is in discussions with Donald Trump in an attempt to promote his anti-Vaxx agendaas chair of a "Vaccine Safety Committee":

Donald Trump reportedly has met with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and invited him to head up a planned “vaccine safety and scientific integrity commission” with an as-yet-unknown directive, although it looks like a shot across the bow of the nation's ship of public health. It also now looks unclear whether or not Trump and Kennedy are on the same page about the invitation itself.

The idea of Kennedy being a part of any federal initiative related to vaccines is appalling, given his record of ignoring scientific evidence that doesn’t fit in with his ill-advised, fantastical fear-mongering about them. Why Trump would choose a lawyer over, say, someone with expertise in vaccines, toxicology and epidemiology is unclear. Perhaps it was Kennedy's comparison of vaccines to "a holocaust" that drew Trump's attention. What is clear is that these two are leaping at the chance to leverage some brand synergy.

I’ve covered Kennedy’s problematic response (or nonresponse) to scientific evidence as it relates to vaccines before. I’ve also covered Trump’s equally problematic relationship with facts as they relate to vaccines and autism, and the ways in which people who cling to one conspiracy theory are so likely to glom onto others. Paranoia can be a hell of a drug, for sure, something that savvy showmen easily manipulate for attention.

But it should surprise no one that Trump and Kennedy found each other. They’re not just having a meeting of conspiracy-oriented minds over vaccine fear-mongering. Maybe paranoia or an attraction to conspiracy theories led them to their mutually shared beliefs. But they also share another feature that keeps them from admitting when they’re wrong, and that’s their commitment to their respective name brands.

Kennedy’s claims about vaccines are staggeringly, blatantly incorrect. He’s had that pointed out to him, repeatedly. It may be that optimistic people looked at his name and lineage and thought that he might be reasonable and objective in assessing these facts. They mistook this Kennedy, who refuses to acknowledge even the most direct evidence controverting his claims, for someone who would go where data led him. Their mistake.

I don't know if RFK would be more upset at his kid spewing flat-earth anti-vaxx bullsh%$, or his offer to work with Donald Trump, but I'm pretty sure that he would be peeling the bark off of his kid right now if he were still here.

And in the World of Film

Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent anti-vaxxer documentary has been pulled from Robert DeNiro's Tribecca film festival:

A controversial film about the discredited link between autism and vaccinations has been pulled from Robert De Niro’s Tribeca film festival, after the actor consulted “the scientific community” and found

The father of an autistic child and co-founder of the festival, De Niro at first defended the decision to premiere Vaxxed: from Cover-Up to Catastrophe, despite outcry from doctors and researchers.

Repeated studies involving more than a million children have found there is no evidence to link childhood vaccines to autism. But a small movement of activists persists in the belief that vaccinations might somehow harm children.

On Saturday De Niro released a statement to explain the new decision. “My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family,” he said.

“But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca film festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.

“The Festival doesn’t seek to avoid or shy away from controversy. However, we have concerns with certain things in this film that we feel prevent us from presenting it in the Festival program. We have decided to remove it from our schedule.”

The controversial film was directed by Andrew Wakefield, a disgraced British former doctor who published a study in 1998 that claimed links between a vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and autism. The paper was quickly found to contain numerous flaws and was deemed by the British Medical Journal “an elaborate fraud”.

You know, 45 seconds on the internet would have revealed that Wakefield is a charlatan and a fraud who should be in jail.

There is a difference between controversial and con man.

Your Daily Dose of Schadenfreude

Anti-Vaxxers Accidentally Fund a Study Showing No Link Between Autism and Vaccines

Heh.

A Bonza Idea from the Aussies

From Australia we see a proposal to limit social welfare benefits to parents who refuse to inoculate their children. Well played:

Parents who are "conscientious objectors" to childhood vaccination will have their childcare and family tax payments stopped from 1 January next year as the federal government attempts to crack down on the anti-vaccination movement.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced on Sunday a loophole would be closed to stop payments to parents worth up to $15,000 per child.

"Parents who vaccinate their children should have confidence that they can take their children to childcare without the fear that their children will be at risk of contracting a serious or potentially life-threatening illness because of the conscientious objections of others," Mr Abbott said.

Although Australia's overall childhood vaccination rates remain high - about 97 per cent - the numbers of people who are registered conscientious objectors has risen in the past 10 years.

There are now 39,000 children aged under seven who are not vaccinated because their parents are registered, according to the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register.

This is an increase of more than 24,000 children over the past 10 years.

This is a very good idea.

First, having unvaccinated children in childcare facilities is like smoking exploding cigars at an oil refinery.

Second, the science has thoroughly debunked Dr. Andrew Wakefield's vaccination-autism link.

Third, much of the anti-vaxx movement is about relying on herd immunity from the rest of society, and so they are moochers.

Forth, it puts those with compromised immune systems, who are medically unable to be vaccinated, at risk.

Finally, children should not  be held hostage to their parents' idiocy:

Writing on The ScentificParent blog, a chagrined Canadian mom announced that she is leaving the anti-vaxx movement after all of her seven children — four of them completely unvaccinated — have come down with whooping cough.

Writing from quarantine, and surrounded by sick kids, Tara Hills wrote she is “emotionally, a bit raw. Mentally a bit taxed. Physically I’m fine,” before admitting that not only are her own kids sick, but they may have exposed her five-month-old niece who is too young to be fully vaccinated.

What began with a cold brought into her home by her brother-in-law, turned into coughing by her kids leading to full-blown whooping cough in all seven children.

“My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. I’d never seen anything like this before,” she wrote. ” Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus – I had heard of this before somewhere. My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into ‘something is WRONG’ mode.”

Jumping onto her computer, she discovered her children’s symptoms matched — almost perfectly — all the symptoms of whooping cough in a household that was woefully under-vaccinated.

“We had vaccinated our first three children on an alternative schedule and our youngest four weren’t vaccinated at all. We stopped because we were scared and didn’t know who to trust,” she explained. ” Was the medical community just paid off puppets of a Big Pharma-Government-Media conspiracy? Were these vaccines even necessary in this day and age? Were we unwittingly doing greater harm than help to our beloved children? So much smoke must mean a fire so we defaulted to the ‘do nothing and hope nothing bad happens’ position.”

Hills explained that she had a hard time overcoming her biases and mistrust of “Big Pharma,” asking herself, “Could all the in-house, independent, peer-reviewed clinical trials, research papers and studies across the globe ALL be flawed, corrupt and untrustworthy?”

Now Hills says that years spent “frozen” out of fear of vaccinating her kids has the whole family frozen: confined to their home by a quarantine.

She said she hopes her mea culpa will make other families who have held back from getting their children vaccinated rethink what they are doing.

“Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk. I want them to know that we tried our best to protect our kids when we were afraid of vaccination and we are doing our best now, for everyone’s sake, by getting them up to date. We can’t take it back … but we can learn from this and help others the same way we have been helped.”

Preach it, sister.

Another Day, Another Study Proving Antivaxxers full of It

No link between vaccines and autism, yet again:

Parents worried about getting young children vaccinated against infectious diseases have fresh cause for reassurance, researchers say.

A new review of existing scientific evidence has concluded that childhood vaccines are safe and don't cause serious health problems such as autism or leukemia.

"Our findings support that vaccines are very safe for children, and add to a substantial body of evidence that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the very low risks," said senior author Dr. Courtney Gidengil, an associate physician scientist at RAND Corporation and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. "Hopefully, this will engage hesitant parents in discussions with their health care providers."

The review found strong evidence that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine is not associated with autism, which is consistent with previous reviews of this rumored link.

Some parents have chosen not to have their children vaccinated because of a now-debunked and retracted study published in 1998 that suggested that the MMR vaccine might cause autism. It was later reported that the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, had altered some of the study's results.

The researchers behind the new study also found no link between childhood leukemia and vaccines for MMR, DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), tetanus, influenza and hepatitis B.

Overall, vaccines given to children 6 or younger are safe, causing few side effects, the review concluded. The findings are published in the July 1 online edition and the August print issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The fact that Andrew Wakefield is still a free man, when the death toll of his fraud numbers in the thousands, dishonors both the justice system and the scientific community.

Another Study Proves that Jenny McCarthy is a Dangerous Loon

We have another study showing that there is no connection between vaccines and autism:

There is no link between receiving a number of vaccines early in life and autism, researchers said on Friday.

In a study slated to appear in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers said there is no association between receiving "too many vaccines too soon" and autism, despite some fears among parents around the number of vaccines given both on a single day and over the first 2 years of life.

As many as one in 50 U.S. school-age children have been diagnosed with autism, up 72 percent since 2007.

………

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Abt Associates analyzed data from children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to a statement from the journal.

Researchers examined each child's cumulative exposure to antigens, the substances in vaccines that cause the body's immune system to produce antibodies to fight disease, and the maximum number of antigens each child received in a single day of vaccination, the journal's statement said.

The antigen totals were the same for children with and without ASD, researchers found.

Not surprising.

In the normal course of growing up, a child is exposed to hundreds, possibly thousands, of new antigens a day, the idea that adding a dozen or so to that would be received through a series of vaccinations would "cause" autism is ludicrous.

Of course, the antediluvian thinking of the anti-vax crowd has real consequences: we have seen increases in outbreaks of previously nearly vanished childhood diseases resulting from a loss of herd immunity.

And Congress Gets Into Antivax Bullsh%$

What a surprise, the conman Darryl Issa supports this, and rather depressingly Dennis Kucinich jumps in with both feet:

I’m not exaggerating. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing trying to look into the cause and prevention of autism. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) launched into a several-minute diatribe (beginning at 12:58 in the video above) that starts off in an Orwellian statement: He claims he’s not antivax. Then he launches into a five-minute speech that promotes long-debunked and clearly incorrect antivax claims, targeting mercury for the most part. Burton has long been an advocate for quackery; for at least a decade he has used Congressional situations like this to promote antiscience.

In the latest hearing, Burton sounds like a crackpot conspiracy theorist, to be honest, saying he knows—better than thousands of scientists who have spent their careers investigating these topics—that thimerosal causes neurological disorders (including autism). He goes on for some time about mercury (as does Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) starting at 21:44 in the video), making it clear he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. For example, very few vaccines still use mercury, and the ones that do use it in tiny amounts and in a form that does not accumulate in the body.

Talking about the danger of mercury in vaccines is like talking about the danger of having hydrogen—an explosive element!—in water. It’s nonsense.

I won’t go further into details, because this shameful travesty of truth and medical health goes on for an hour. On Forbes.com, Steven Salzberg wrote a fantastic article about this Congressional farce. I strongly urge you to read it, since Salzberg brings the hammer down on the Congresscritters who think they know more about science than the scientists who actually devote their lives to this topic.

Let's be clear, the anti-vaxers do more than hurt themselves, and their hapless children. They harm those for whom vaccines have limited effectiveness, or who are too young, like Dana McCaffrey, because they destroy herd immunity.

The modern version of this was started Andrew Wakefield by a con man who had an interest in a (surprise, non working) "treatment" alternative ginned up a phony controversy to line his own pockets.

The people who support this crap are being either evil or stupid.

Jenny McCarthy Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass*

Steven Wakefield's now discredited paper in Lancet claiming a tie between autism and vaccines is now more than just a zealot doing bad science.

Brian Deer of the British Medical Journal reveals that it was outright fraud:

In the first part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school.

………

Unknown to Mr 11, Wakefield was working on a lawsuit, for which he sought a bowel-brain “syndrome” as its centrepiece. Claiming an undisclosed £150 (€180, $230) an hour through a Norfolk solicitor named Richard Barr, he had been confidentially 8 put on the payroll two years before the paper was published, eventually grossing him £435 643, plus expenses.

(emphasis original)

Now the question is when he goes to jail for fraud, though if I were the prosecutor, I would add felony murder to the bill of indictment as well.

^*Jenny McCarthy is a big antivaxxer.

Anti-Vaxxers Handed Another Well Deserved Defeat

A 3 judge panel has ruled that there is no scientific basis for claims of a link between thimerosal and autism:

In a further blow to the antivaccine movement, three judges ruled Friday in three separate cases that thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury, does not cause autism.

The three rulings are the second step in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding begun in 2002 in the United States Court of Federal Claims. The proceeding combines the cases of 5,000 families with autistic children seeking compensation from the federal vaccine injury fund, which comes from a 75-cent tax on every dose of vaccine.

Understand that there is a fund, which can, and does pay out for things like allergic reactions, and judges ruled that there is no factual basis for this at all:

In the three cases brought against the government, by the parents of Jordan King, Colin R. Dwyer and William Mead, all three special masters used strong language in dismissing the expert evidence from the families’ lawyers.

The master in the King ruling emphasized that it was “not a close case” and “extremely unlikely” that Jordan’s autism was connected to his vaccines. The master in the Dwyer case wrote that many parents “relied upon practitioners and researchers who peddled hope, not opinions grounded in science and medicine.”

This is judge speak for, "Get out of here, you nut jobs."

Now, if only we could get Jenny McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. off of Huff Po before they do any more damage.

Stephen Andrew Wakefield Acted Unethically

Medical regulators in the UK have now ruled that Stephen Andrew Wakefield acted unethically in the conduct of his study linking vaccinations and autism.

The doctor who first suggested a link between MMR vaccinations and autism acted unethically, the official medical regulator has found.

Dr Andrew Wakefield's 1998 Lancet study caused vaccination rates to plummet, resulting in a rise in measles - but the findings were later discredited.

The General Medical Council ruled he had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in doing his research.

, Dr Wakefield said the claims were "unfounded and unjust".

The GMC case did not investigate whether Dr Wakefield's findings were right or wrong, instead it was focused on the methods of research.

During the two-and-a-half years of hearings - one of the longest in the regulator's history - he was accused of a series of charges.

'Callous disregard'

The verdict, read out by panel chairman Dr Surendra Kumar, criticised Dr Wakefield for the invasive tests, such as spinal taps, that were carried out on children and which were found to be against their best clinical interests.

The panel said Dr Wakefield, who was working at London's Royal Free Hospital as a gastroenterologist at the time, did not have the ethical approval or relevant qualifications for such tests.

The GMC also took exception with the way he gathered blood samples. Dr Wakefield paid children £5 for the samples at his son's birthday party.

Dr Kumar said he had acted with "callous disregard for the distress and pain the children might suffer".

(emphasis original)

It's likely that they will pull his certification to practice medicine, though this might not mean much, as Wakefield left the UK, and now practices in the United States.

His research, which was not merely bad, but corrupt, had sickened thousands of children who were either not vaccinated, or caught disease from their unvaccinated friends. (vaccines are not 100%, and the loss of herd immunity is a serious issue)

Additionally, Lancet has already rescinded the original article.

One hopes that he ends his life in jail, because he wasn't just wrong, he pushed forward his bogus study in the hopes of making money from an equally bogus therapy that he had patented.

[on edit]
A sharp eyed reader noticed that I got his name wrong. I have corrected, but have left the original strike through to show what a complete prat I am.

Truth Hits the Autism-Vaccine Wacko Community

Well, a couple of days ago, it was revealed that doctor Andrew Wakefield's data on autism and vaccines were completely fraudulent, and now the federal vaccine court, which was largely created on the back of Wakefield's myth, has ruled that there is no credible connections between vaccines and autism.

As to the court case:

The decision by three independent special masters is especially telling because the special court's rules did not require plaintiffs to prove their cases with scientific certainty -- all the parents needed to show was that a preponderance of the evidence, or "50 percent and a hair," supported their claims. The vaccine court effectively said today that the thousands of pending claims represented by the three test cases are on extremely shaky ground.

In his ruling on one case, special master George Hastings said the parents of Michelle Cedillo -- who had charged that a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused their child to develop autism -- had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment."

Hastings said that he was deeply moved by the suffering autism imposed on families such as the Cedillos, but that "the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating . . . a link."

As to the despicable Andrew Wakefield and his 1997 article in the Lancet, this is more than just bad science.

Wakefield, in the employ of vaccine litigation specialists, simply made up data:

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

You can see my earlier posts on this here.

Stop Jenny McCarthy

There is a website about Jenny McCarthy, and the lies that she spreads regarding conditions on the Autism spectrum.

I have a child on the Autism Spectrum (Aspergers), and my wife noted signs at birth, and had specific concerns about a condition on the spectrum before he turned 3, but my anecdote is no more valid than McCarthy's where she claims that vaccines cause autism, and that her son "recovered".

Neither happen in Autism. The data is clear: there is no correlation between Autism Spectrum disorders and vaccines.

While correlation does not prove causation, lack of correlation does prove lack of causation, and this has been proved dozens of times.

As to "curing" people on the spectrum, you can't, as is the case with children "recovering" from Autism. They aren't broken, they are different, and so they need to learn how to bridge the gap with the rest of the world.

Let's Be Clear on This: There is No Autism-Vaccine Link, Just Scientists On One Side and Liars On the Other

That's the truth and Washington Post reporter Shankar Vedantam manages to ignore the fact that there is no correlation between vaccines and conditions on the autism spectrum.^*

The author mentions that the new study contradicts a 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, but ignores the fact that he was accused of, "suppressing and falsifying data", that his co-authors of this study have disavowed his reasearch, and at this time is under investigation for serious professional and financial misconduct.

He faces removal of his medical license as a result.

If there is any justice in the world, he will end up in to jail too.

^*There is some dispute as to whether Aspergers is mild Autism, or a different condition on the Autism spectrum, a distinction which I would generally expect a reporter to miss.

Measles Cases Skyrocket Because of Bad, Ignorant Parents

Yep, it's those vaccination flat Earthers again, with measles cases to date this year being three times more than all of last year.

I will note that a significant number of the cases are infants who are too young to get the vaccine, so the loss of herd immunity because of these harms the helpless whose bear no blame.

There is no correlation between thimerosal in particular, or vaccines in general, and autism.

While correlation does not prove causation, lack of correlation does prove causation.

What's more the (hopefully soon to be stripped of his license) doctor who came up with the theory has a history of making up his own facts, and has a financial interest in alternatives to vaccines.

My earlier posts on the subject here.

I will note that my son is on the autism spectrum, he has Aspergers, and my wife, a special education professional trained to look for such things, spotted the first indicators in his first weeks of life. No vaccine problems there.