[More standard rubbish from Fumento, although here is a classic: 'And don't dismiss the power of a good old-fashioned conspiracy. "It's astounding to me that people can imagine that America's pediatricians and family physicians and public health officials are scheming to harm children," says Sawyer.' That is true (no one has ever claimed that), but used here it is called Lying with the Truth, a distraction from the conspiracy which is centred around suppressing the vaccine damage (autism and bowel disease) which is engineered from the top using bogus studies eg: Government/industry, and by using the GMC kangaroo court to falsely discredit Wakefield. Along with constant lies about Wakefield being discredited and MMR being safe, as trumpeted by the Greek Chorus. Those lies come out of government which is run by Allopathy Inc. Also the standard ploy to make out Anti-vaccine people are mad and dangerous.]
February 5, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fumento5-2010feb05,0,3589719.story
The doctor who launched the modern anti-vaccine movement acted "dishonestly
and irresponsibly," Britain's General Medical Council has ruled. But fear not.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield is still a hero to his many acolytes. And others, with
curious credentials, fight on to terrify parents into not getting their children
inoculated.
In 1998, Wakefield wrote and then vociferously hawked an article in the British
medical journal Lancet linking autism to the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and
rubella). After the council's decision, Lancet this week retracted the article.
Among the facts that have come out of the inquiry into Wakefield's research is
that two years before his paper appeared, lawyers seeking to sue vaccine makers
paid Wakefield the equivalent of $700,000.
After Wakefield's article appeared, vaccination levels plummeted in Britain and
declined in the United States, and the diseases they prevented surged. Measles
cases increased sevenfold in the U.S.
"One person's research set us back a decade, and we're just now recovering from
that," Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Radey
Children's Hospital in San Diego, told me in an interview.
But are we recovering? Anti-vaccination groups have popped up like toadstools
after rain (there are more than 180 on the Web), while older ones such as the
National Vaccine Information Center were reinvigorated. For the most part, these
groups have had only a marginal effect on national vaccination rates, but they
have encouraged localized boycotts of immunization. (In one Washington county,
27% of children had vaccination exemptions in 2006-07.) The result has been a
resurgence of diseases gone so long that some doctors don't even recognize them.
And children die because of it.
Before the MMR vaccine became available in 1971, measles, mumps and rubella
annually afflicted 530,000, 162,000 and 48,000 U.S. children, respectively,
killing a total of more than 600. By the middle of the last decade, there were
fewer than 7,000 new cases annually and zero deaths. But the anti-vaccine groups
generally claim the injections were irrelevant and that factors such as better
nutrition caused the declines.
Meanwhile, their "science" comes down to little more than that autism symptoms
are often first recognized at the same age that children are getting their first
vaccinations. So they lumped the MMR in with a list of other childhood vaccines
that formerly contained the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, although the
MMR never contained thimerosal.
And don't dismiss the power of a good old-fashioned conspiracy. "It's astounding
to me that people can imagine that America's pediatricians and family physicians
and public health officials are scheming to harm children," says Sawyer.
Never mind that by 2008, more than 20 articles published in peer-reviewed
medical journals found no connection between MMR vaccine and autism, while two
suggested a connection -- one by Wakefield.
There's also a mountain of reassuring evidence regarding thimerosal-preserved
vaccines. The studies are a result of the United States and other countries --
while strongly reaffirming the safety of thimerosal -- giving in to activist
demands and having it removed from childhood vaccines. That gave researchers a
wonderful opportunity to do "before and after" studies.
Anti-vaccinationists initially claimed California autism cases dropped. False.
The "data do not show any recent decrease in autism in California" despite the
discontinuation of thimerosal use, the state's Department of Developmental
Services found in 2008.
Published evaluations of children in Sweden, Denmark and Canada also have shown
that autism diagnoses continued to increase after the discontinuation of
vaccinations with thimerosal. U.S. cases keep rising as well.
Some groups claim only to oppose mandatory vaccines, but this ignores the need
for what's called "herd immunity." That means a certain level of the population
must be vaccinated (generally around 85% to 90%) so those unvaccinated are still
protected.
Lack of herd immunity is what killed Gabriella "Brie" Romaguera. The New Orleans
baby died of pertussis, or whooping cough. At one time, this disease afflicted
more than 250,000 American children yearly, killing 9,000. Vaccinations reduced
that to just 1,000 new cases annually by 1976; but by 2008, cases had soared to
more than 10,000 annually.
Brie contracted the disease when she was a month old, too young for her first
pertussis vaccine. "I'm not laying blame," her mother, Danielle, told me. "But
people need to know they can infect other people's babies. It kills. People
think these diseases don't exist anymore, but that's only because children are
being vaccinated."
Romaguera is especially upset by "celebrity science," as exemplified by Jenny
McCarthy. The actress and former Playboy playmate claims vaccines made her son
autistic but that she "cured" him. There is no cure. McCarthy's antics include
yelling at three physicians on "Larry King Live," and exclaiming: "My son died
in front of me from a vaccine injury!" Her son is alive, as she later
acknowledged.
Yet she'd be little more than an opinionated pinup girl but for being invited to
share her "expertise" on "Larry King," ABC's "20/20," "Good Morning America" and
other popular shows. All this has helped propel McCarthy's two books on autism
to bestsellerdom.
"Celebrities are entitled to support a cause," said Sawyer. "But when they give
professional advice, I think that's dangerous."
"It makes it hard for doctors," said Romaguera. "Our pediatrician says parents
tell him all the time they don't care what the science says. And because of it,
babies and kids are dying."
Michael Fumento is director of the Independent Journalism Project, where he
specializes in health and science issues.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times