Andrew Wakefield Helps Elect Anti-Vaccine Politicians in Texas

By Alex Berezow — February 21, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

Like Pig-Pen from Peanuts, a cloud of filth follows Andrew Wakefield wherever he goes.

Wakefield is the doctor whose medical license was revoked in the UK following his fraudulent "study" in which he linked the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine to autism. He is essentially the Father of the Modern Anti-Vaccine Movement.

And he's been welcomed with open arms in Texas. According to a new report in Australian media, "the rate of Texan children exempted from at least one vaccine had surged by a staggering 1,900 per cent since Wakefield's arrival."

But that's not all! Wakefield is also promoting a variety of anti-vaccine groups... for a price, of course. In 2018, The Guardian wrote:

"Wakefield's most substantial contribution to Texas appears to be the network of autism-related charities and businesses he has been affiliated with, and in some instances drew six-figure salaries from, from the early 2000s onwards." [Emphasis added]

In other words, scaring parents away from vaccinating their children is a way for Wakefield to make himself filthy rich. Apparently not content with blood money, the disgraced doctor is now trying to get anti-vaccine politicians elected to the Texas legislature.

A New Anti-Vaxx Threat: Texans for Vaccine Choice

Wakefield has thrown his support behind Texans for Vaccine Choice, a group whose mission is to elect anti-vaccine candidates. The website has a report card for members of the Texas legislature.

Candidates who support "vaccine choice" (which is a nice way of saying "anti-vaxxer") are given A's, while pro-vaccine candidates are given F's. Lovely.

Conveniently, the website also provides a how-to guide on getting a vaccine exemption. Even lovelier.

Does Wakefield Have a Conscience?

Last year, 82,000 Europeans contracted measles, 72 of whom died. In Madagascar, a measles outbreak that began in September 2018 has sickened 68,000 and killed more than 900. Measles outbreaks are also occurring across the United States.

Does Wakefield feel no shame? No guilt? No sense of responsibility?

At this point, I am beyond words. And, trust me, making me speechless is a difficult thing to accomplish.
 

 

Researchers have ditched the autism-vaccine theory. Here’s what they think actually causes it.

Genes and the microbiome are some of the most promising leads.

by Julia Belluz@juliaoftoronto julia.belluz@voxmedia.com May 11, 2017

Of all the issues doctors have explored in children’s health, none has been more exhaustively researched than the question of whether vaccines are linked to autism. After hundreds and hundreds of studies in thousands of children, “We can say with almost as much certainty than anybody could ever say that vaccines don’t cause autism,” Mayo Clinic autism researcher Dr. Sunil Mehta told me.

And yet the fear that they do remains stubbornly persistent, as a current measles outbreak in Minnesota shows. The virus is spreading among unvaccinated children — in this case, Somali-Americans in Minneapolis, after anti-vaccine advocates targeted their parents with a misinformation campaign. Now 51 people, most of them children, are very, very ill......But “of all the causes of autism, the thing we know with the greatest certainty is that it’s a very genetic disorder,” said UCSF geneticist and autism researcher Stephan Sanders. “If you look at a child with autism, then look at their siblings, you’ll find the rate of autism is 10 times higher in those siblings than in the general population. This has been looked at in populations of millions.”

Researchers first recognized the genetic underpinnings of the disorder in the 1970s, with studies on twins involving at least one sibling with autism. They found that monozygotic twins (with nearly identical genetics) were more likely to have autism in common than dizygotic (or non-identical) twins who shared less in common genetically....... Not everyone with those genetic mutations has autism — and that’s because researchers believe it’s not mutations alone that cause the disorder.......Researchers agree the MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism — but the evidence is weak for other triggers after birth......To Read More....

My Take - For years I've attempted to overcome the idea pesticides are a cause of autism and interestingly - now - that's not even being discussed.  One thing I always felt was an important clue that autism was a genetic issue was the fact autism is sexist!  Boys are more likely to suffer from autism than girls. 

That's genetics it seems to me, and that was where I thought researchers should have targeted their efforts.  Unfortunately loons like Wakefield and his loony Hollywood supporters like Robert DeNiro, Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey and Oprah Winfrey infected the conversation and slowed the direction of good research. 

When are we going to get real with celebrities and stop listening to the clabber they spew out? I'm a big fan of "question everything", but you don't stop questioning and start answering until all the evidence is in.  The evidence wasn't in because it was fraudulent, and as usual, Hollywood bought into it lock, stock and barrel. 

I wonder if because they're so used to reading, memorizing and mouthing fiction for a living they're incapable of telling the difference any longer.

 

Autism Doctor A Fraud, But Hardly Alone

BY MICHAEL FUMENTO

This appeared in Mr. Michael Fumento's blog here on January 10, 2011

"A deliberate fraud." That's what the British Medical Journal, one of the world's most prestigious periodicals, has written of the study that kicked off the current anti-vaccine movement. It's "clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare," it said in a heavily documented editorial.

The lead author of that anti-vaccine study, which also appeared in one most respected medical journals, The Lancet, was British physician Andrew Wakefield. And its consequences, as I write in AOL News, include millions of terrified and confused parents, large drops in vaccination rates and death.

This is the face of pertussis.

Many people, including me, have spent years puncturing his claims and those of his acolytes in the anti-vaccine movement. But a media that thrives on sensationalism instead played up the phony link.

Yet while this "deliberate fraud" has been exposed, others continue to go unchallenged, or worse, get trumpeted by reporters who should know better.

Last year the World Health Organization, having exaggerated the world AIDS problem by 12-fold, then hyped SARS and then spent four years terrifying us over avian flu (remember avian flu?), converted the mildest flu strain in decades (swine flu H1N1) into the first flu pandemic in 41 years simply by rewriting the flu pandemic definition. Aiding it was a study in Science magazine that completely misrepresented the citations it used as authority.

Likewise, San Francisco last year became the first jurisdiction in the country to put warning labels on cell phones, influenced in great part by a series of studies published in peer-reviewed journals alleging they cause brain tumors. Yet as I wrote in a CEI paper, "Celling Fear," they're all by a single environmental activist and totally fly in the face of the main body of research. Plus the city relied on an Environmental Working Group paper that used citations saying exactly the opposite of what the report claimed.

Why does fraudulent science thrive? Better to ask, "Why not?" It pays.

Even when the fraudsters get caught, they often laugh all the way to the bank. Wakefield gets more than $300,000 a year in salary alone from an anti-vaccine group.

Why! That's even more than I got for writing that article for AOL News!

January 10, 2011 03:11 PM • Diseases (other than AIDS and cancer) ~ Hysteria ~ Vaccines • Recent Posts

At some point someone is going to have to ask who is responsible for all of the unnecessary deaths because people have stopped vaccinating their children.  Wakefield is certainly one of them, but what about these Hollywood celebrities who are promoting this stuff?  You know the ones who were waiting tables and parking cars before they became "stars".  Perhaps it's time the ambulance chasing attorneys got involved.  Wouldn't it be ironic if Erin Brokovich was the one to start the ball rolling?  RK

American Council on Science and Health, 2011: Week 16

ACSH welcomes new Director of Publications Today (Thursday 4/28/11) marks the arrival of our new Director of Publications Alyssa Pelish.

Anti-pesticide camps should be the ones accused of lower IQs Just in time for the 41st annual Earth Day last Friday, the news media went wild reporting on a trio of highly flawed studies published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, a periodical now notorious for reporting on junk science research.

“Save the Frogs” campaign: Follow the money to an anti-pesticide ruse Two recent articles in The American Spectator and the Huffington Post, as well as a posting on JunkScience.com, have pulled back the veil of deception of the current "Save the Frogs" campaign; we'd like to praise Robert James Bidinotto, Jon Entine, and Steve Milloy, respectively, for these editorial contributions.

My Take - For over 40 years I have been hearing the greenies claim that mankind was killing the frogs with some chemical.  For 40 years they have been wrong!  How could that be?  Because everything the greenies tell us a lie; either lies of commission or lies of omission!  We need to "get that"  

Flame retardants pose lifesaving benefit, not risk The headline on a recent article screamed "UC flame-retardant study finds risks for kids." However, the article, written by Marla Cone in SF Gate, makes no such assertion, therefore, whoever wrote the misleading headline needs to be educated.

An indoor, smoke-free America in 2020? Give it another nine years or so and every state will have implemented an indoor smoking ban.

Wakefield to blame for measles outbreak in EU Hopefully the recent whooping cough epidemic in California and now a measles outbreak in Europe will convince anti-vaccine activists that their propaganda is putting thousands of lives at risk.

My Take - Recently one of my posts dealing with this issue was recommended by one of my favorite commentators, Patrice Lewis. One of her readers commented;

"...he doesn't hold back..." well that's putting it nicely…….. I definitely won't be visiting that blog again. He's just about as abrasive as a sandblaster. “

It fascinates me that some are so worried about the sensitivities of those selling death to children.  I absolutely wonder at people’s priorities....and their sanity. I commented back;

“As for being abrasive; how can someone be gentle with those who are promoting things that have such terrible consequences for so many innocent children? Much like the snake oil peddlers of 100 year ago, they are peddling death. If being as “ abrasive as a sandblaster “ will force people to think in order to save the lives of these poor innocent children; not to mention the pain, agony and self incrimination that parents must go through when their children die….then I say thank you. I accept!

Earth to Linn County: Even the FDA is OK with smokeless tobacco products The Linn County, Iowa Board of Supervisors will vote next month on whether to ban the sale of dissolvable tobacco products.

Death rates improved for high blood pressure patients — but still much higher than normal According to a new study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, mortality due to hypertension is decreasing, yet it's still greater in people with high blood pressure compared to those without.

Birth interventions: More or less sometimes equals the same In terms of interventions during labor and delivery to improve neonatal (birth) outcomes, today's mantra might be less is more. Or not.

Chernobyl 25 years later: Less cancer than feared –– but more PTSD Twenty-five years ago today, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian SSR in the former Soviet Union - near the Polish border - exploded, causing a global frenzy of fear and panic.

Danes propose restrictions on certain phthalates Denmark's Environmental Protection Agency is calling for the restriction of four phthalates under REACH (the European Union's precautionary chemical regulation protocol).

Activist Attack on Coke’s Use of BPA Fizzles ACSH staffers would like to take our hats off to Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, who announced in an annual company meeting Wednesday in Atlanta that he does not believe there exists sufficient scientific evidence to stop using BPA in the epoxy linings of the company's iconic cans.

Unusual dilemma for Genentech: Competing against itselfThe results from a multicenter trial funded by the National Eye Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health) demonstrate that after one year of follow-up, both Lucentis (ranibizumab) and Avastin (bevacizumab) had equivalent effects on maintaining or improving visual acuity in the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a common cause of irreversible blindness among the elderly.

Junk food ads for kids may fall under same restrictions as X-rated content Four governmental agencies - the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) - yesterday proposedvoluntary guidelines for the food industry that would limit "junk food" advertisements aimed at children up to the age of 17.

Quitting smoking difficult for all, especially the mentally ill The results of a small study on Pfizer's smoking cessation drug Chantix (varenicline) underscore the difficulties smokers face when attempting to kick the habit for good.

Cleveland misses two birds with one stone ACSH staffers would like to give two thumbs down to the Cleveland City Council for recently passing some "extraordinary" public health bills.

My Take - I talked to one of my restaurateur friends in Cleveland when this passed. He said this was a waste because they weren’t using trans fats anyway, but now it created more paperwork for his to show that he wasn’t using trans fats. We both agreed that this wasn’t their business. I have to wonder how many medical and scientific experts Cleveland has on the City Council. I also wonder who is really behind this measure.

Cleveland is a great town. We have more diversity than any city in the country per ratio…and for whatever problems we may have, we get along better than most others most of the time. Any kind of food from any area of the world you may want can be found in Cleveland, and we have pierogies. We have what is considered one of the great symphonic orchestras of the world, and Severance Hall, where they perform. We have the second largest theatre district in the country. We have the science museum, garden center, natural history museum and a wonderful art museum. And if it is your taste…the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

We have some of the most fabulous medical facilities in the world here. We have plenty of great low cost golf courses and if you are into intramural sports we have all that also. We have water and snow skiing. We have plenty of great suburbs with great homes at a fraction of the cost of those in places like California and we are surrounded by a Green Ring of Metro Parks. And we have the Browns, the Indians and the Cavaliers to rally around….with great passion.

This problem In Cleveland is that by the time things like this make it to the local news rag the deal was already struck behind closed doors. I love this town and intend to spend my life here, but the fact remains; nothing has changed. The roads are still in desperate need of repair! That really is their job! I sure wish someone would tell them!

Seniors should take it one step at a time, literally Falls are the leading cause of injury among people over the age of 65, and according to the CDC, it affects one in three adults each year.

Ignore that quacking sound: Thermograms are not the new mammogram, no matter what Dr. Mercola says With his website ranked the 390th most popular, Dr. Joseph Mercola uses his online notoriety to tout thermograms as diagnostic screening tools for early breast cancer detection.

Gene therapy brings new hope for Tay-Sachs disease Tay-Sachs disease, a devastating congenital error in metabolism of central nervous system fats, is caused by a rare genetic mutation.

A heart-y affirmation: Current ICU interventions pump up heart attack survival A new Swedish study confirms the efficacy of current medical interventions for the emergency treatment of symptoms and signs of acute coronary occlusion (i.e. heart attack).

Greenpeace lawsuit could endanger stem cell research A new court ruling in Europe could bring the development of life-saving embryonic stem cell therapies to a halt.

FDA panel unanimously endorses Merck’s boceprevir for Hepatitis CAs most virology experts predicted (including ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom), an FDA advisory panel voted to recommend that Victrelis (boceprivir), the first specific antiviral drug for hepatitis C, be approved by the FDA.