Paper Linking Vaccine and Autism Retracted

The major British medical journal, the Lancet, has officially issued a retraction of the Andrew Wakefield paper which claimed a possible link between autism and the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.

The action came after an ethic judgment against Wakefield was issued last week by the British General Medical council.

For years other experts and researchers have been arguing that Wakefield’s claim was totally without merit and now the Lancet apparently agrees.

Unfortunately the damage has pretty much already been done. Based upon Wakefield’s apparently spurious claims, a whole anti-vaccination culture has evolved complete with its own celebrities.

This is a perfect example of Idiot America which unfortunately has also taken hold in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. One “celebrity component” of the anti-vaccine says her “mommy sense” knows that vaccines cause autism despite what all those silly scientists and medical experts say.

Heaven help us from ourselves.

I agree with the criticism that the Lancet should have taken some sort of official action, if only to declare the paper’s result in serious doubt, long before this.

Now we’ll see how the “mommy sense” advocates react. I’m betting there will be loud denunciations of the Lancet’s actions and cries of a witch hunt before the whole controversy slowly fades away.

Unfortunately that’s not going to bring back any of the children who have died because their parents were falsely frightened into not getting them vaccinated.