Thanks to recent events, there was only one choice for this week's idiot: Andrew Wakefield.
Wakefield burst on to the scene in 1998 with a paper in The Lancet (since disavowed by all the other authors and the journal) linking the MMR vaccine with autism and irritable bowel syndrome. The only problems with his results were that no one else could independently replicate them, he was paid by a lawyer looking to sue for "vaccine-induced autism" (11 of 12 cases in the original study were litigants against drug companies), and he was trying to patent a new, "safer" MMR vaccine. Accordingly, Wakefield was slapped around by the General Medical
Council for scientific misconduct, including unnecessary invasive medical procedures on young children, leading to the hospitalization of two children.In the past week, investigative reporter Brian Deer has presented evidence not only of conflicts of interest, but that Wakefield faked his results.
The sins of anti-vaccination are many:
- MMR vaccination rate down to 75% (from 93%) below herd immunity levels
- 1348 measles cases in the UK in 2008 (up from 56 in 1998)
- 11 measles cases in Victoria, Australia so far in 2009 (more than 2006&2007 combined)
- 22 measles cases in Switzerland so far in 2009
- Death of a 12 year old in Geneva from measles-induced encephalitis
- Death of an unvaccinated 7 month old infant in Minnesota from Haemophilus influenzae type b
- and many more. . .
Wakefield styles himself as an intellectual martyr, a Galileo if you will. I hear that Galileo was a bit of an ass, but heliocentrism doesn't have a body count in small children.
