Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s medical license has been revoked after it was revealed that he had falsified all twelve of the medical histories in his 1998 study.
“It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors,” Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, told CNN. “But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.”
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
Sign up to get Crisis articles delivered to your inbox daily
…
The now-discredited paper panicked many parents and led to a sharp drop in the number of children getting the vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella. Vaccination rates dropped sharply in Britain after its publication, falling as low as 80 percent by 2004. Measles cases have gone up sharply in the ensuing years.
In the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than in any other year since 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 90 percent of those infected had not been vaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, the CDC reported.
Why would he do such a thing? Perhaps because “he had had been paid [for the study] by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers”–the equivalent of more than $600,000. Ah.
For the record, all six of our kids, homeschooled, are current on vaccinations. There’s a certain subculture within the U.S. (including, perhaps even especially, within faithful Catholicism) that embraces an avoidance of vaccines. But the starting point for that movement was this fraudulent article. It’s time for the movement to come to an end.
If you haven’t gotten your kids vaccinated … please do.