I’ve been blogging on the MMR vaccine controversy here since 2003, writing letters to my professional journal about the safety of the vaccine since 2002, and prior to that arguing with kooks on the internet in internet newsgroups about vaccines. While over that time the claims supporting any link between MMR vaccine and autism were [...]
I’ve had an editorial published in The Pharmaceutical Journal attempting to tell the story of the MMR vaccine – autism story from beginning to end. It’s free to read for the next 30 days, and then will disappear behind a firewall. Here’s the part about Wakefield’s virological tests for measles virus:
The 1998 paper did not [...]
Despite the overwhelming amount of science failing to find a link between MMR vaccine and autism, as well as the dishonest and unethical behaviour of Wakefield, there are a number of journalists still prepared to push the hoax. One of these is Fiona Phillips. You can watch her talking about MMR on Question Time, and [...]
The 1998 Wakefield paper has been retracted by The Lancet. Google Scholar suggests the paper has been cited 971 times since it was published, mostly I suspect by further studies refuting it, or editorials about the MMR-autism hoax. It’s not the only crap published by Wakefield in The Lancet. How he ever got his letter [...]
In an editorial full of fail in the Mail about the Wakefield judgment, two point stands out for me. The first is an amazing lack of knowledge about the public money spent on the Wakefield hoax:
And the parents? They were denied the legal aid (available to every Tom, Dick and terrorist [they really are beyond [...]
Apart from people who have boosted Andrew Wakefield’s discredited and dishonest wild theories about MMR vaccine over the years (Lucy Johnston, Melanie Phillips, Fiona Phillips et al), one journalist will forever be associated with Wakefield: Brian Deer.
Brian Deer is no shill for the pharmaceutical industry. Back in the 90s he tackled the harms of Septrin [...]
I haven’t posted here for nearly three months, so hello. I’ve recently obtained a full-time lecturer post at Aston University, so the blog has been a low-priority. However, it seems a shame for the blog to die, since it will be seven years old in February.
One of the issues this blog has followed fairly closely [...]
The recent tragic death of Stephen Gately, which may have been due to a heart problem, was exploited by Jan Moir in her Daily Mail column to make a wider point:
All the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances. The Gately family are – perhaps understandably – keen to register their [...]
In the space of 4 days we have had a flurry of irresponsible news reporting about HPV vaccine following the death of a child. One of the rent-a-gobs that newspapers persist in obtaining quotes from is Jackie Fletcher, “leader” of the JABS campaigning group. JABS is largely concerned with propagating the hoax MMR vaccine-autism association, [...]