Autism Children

The Man-made Autism Children Never Had

It was just the kind of news that the British tabloids eternally circle in the skies for - something to feed their fear-mongering publishing machine, to cause a short-lived sensation to sell a few papers with. The year was 1998, and respected medical journal Lancet in England, published this research study on autism, children who had it, and how they come to have it. The study was done at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and the scientist, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, claimed that vaccines for measles, affected children's intestines in a way that gave them autism. The good doctor didn’t stop there; he went public with it, and encouraged parents to not give their children combination MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. Of course, the papers went crazy for it in England, and parents went and happily refused the vaccine for their children by the hundreds of thousands. England, a place that had all but seen measles vanish prior to that, began to have big-time outbreaks all over again. The parents were happy; at least measles would blow over; if their children got autism, what would they do?

But the thing is, no scientist has ever since been able to replicate Dr. Wakefield’s results on her own. Everyone smelt a rat, but weren’t able to prove decisively that the theory that autism, children can get from vaccines was false. After 12 years of lawsuits, investigations and what not, the Lancet medical journal is finally going with common sense, and withdrawing the questionable study. They’ve even called it misleading and false. How did they come by this kind of assertive courage? Well they borrowed it. The British authority that licenses doctors, looked closely at the study done, and came to the conclusion the scientist had treated the children in his study with callous disregard. You’d never normally get to see such strong language from a British authority; they called him dishonest, irresponsible, and his conduct willfully misleading. The study was all that, and more. Children actually died or fell victim to hearing disabilities because they caught the diseases that perfectly good vaccine exist for.

You could forgive the press for spreading the story like that if at least all the 13 doctors who took part in the research study stood by their findings the whole time. But they all melted into the darkness soon after the study released, so unfounded were the findings. There is in every country, a large anti-vaccine group, that is loud and strident; Dr. Wakefield became their hero, and they said that he was a lone voice standing against the pharmaceutical industry’s conspiracy to make big profits out of unnecessary vaccines. It so happens, that vaccines are deeply, deeply discounted, and no one makes big profits on them. If there is a lesson to learn in the whole autism-children vaccine fiasco, it is that no one should ever take a study seriously, unless it is done on thousands of subjects, and is duplicated successfully by many other scientists. This autism-vaccine connection had neither quality.