Five minutes' search will provide all
the rhetoric and actual data you can inhale regarding the sad
controversy over vaccination of children started by semi-literate and
reactionary non-doctors, so I cannot hope to bring to light anything
not previously available. This topic is, like any nonsensical
conspiracy-based explanation, fascinating regardless, if only for the
tenacity with which people cling to it.
We begin with The Lancet. A
peer-reviewed medical journal that, depending on whom you ask,
displays a broad range of reliability and objectivity. The Lancet has
been edited since 1995 by Richard Horton, a highly-educated and
respected physician with the small exception of his disdain for the
peer-review process as quoted in the Medical Journal of Australia
#172 (link is behind paywall). Three years after taking the helm,
Horton's Lancet published the now infamous and
fully-discredited report by Andrew Wakefield, a twelve-time convicted
child abuser, accusing vaccination against measles, mumps, and
rubella of directly causing children to develop autism. Outcry from
serious medical professionals and researchers was deafening, as was
the belligerent defense from people who seemed to be convinced that
modern medicine was a long con.
To state it directly, autism is not
fully understood. Many brilliant people are spending countless hours
trying to piece together the myriad of data on what carries the
diminutive title of Autism Spectrum Disorder, and it currently
appears to be a form of genetic development problems in combination
with environmental toxins affecting the brain with symptoms that do
not present immediately or impact each affected individual in exactly
the same way. What is understood by any serious person, however, is
that a preservative called Thiomersal cannot be shown to be linked
directly in any way with children diagnosed as having ASD, as was
claimed by Wakefield.
The Lancet published this
fraudulent report and stood by it for a full five years, providing a
weapon for anti-vaccine nonsense that carried with it the pretense of
accuracy – medical science (in the form of one journal) said that
vaccinating your child would infect them with autism. When they
finally did admit that the report was not fit for publication, they
hedged their admission by praising the “new ideas” it had raised
while giving no mention to the fact that none of these new ideas had
been worth anything at all. Chief Editor Horton, in fact, was quoted by NPR as saying the link between vaccination and autism was never
claimed by either the journal or the article itself.
But did the acceptance of medical
science's proclamation of “Bullshit!” come quickly, or at all, to
the people so proudly assured that they had seen through the con? Of
course not. It should have been obvious to me, given their
whole-hearted embrace of the cognitive dissonance implicit in
trusting a medical professional to tell them medical professionals
were lying to them. All part of the trick, they were assured, the
grand design of pharmacology to produce a generation of people with a
sometimes-crippling condition. Just trying to come up with an end
game that would require disabling the development of children to varying degrees and en
masse is beyond my capacity.
The easiest to identify of the
child-endangering anti-vaccine mob is Jenny McCarthy, whom you can
remember from her intellectually staggering turn on Singled Out. She
became publicly very vocal regarding her medical opinions, which I
hazard a guess is how most of us found out this was even a subject
being discussed. Before, during, and after the article's denouncement
McCarthy frightened countless parents into choosing to expose their
children to unnecessary risk which we relegated to memory decades
prior.
Now McCarthy is a member of a group of
people on daytime television who have unfortunately gained a position
of authority and influence in our culture, instead of our previous
habit of correctly regarding them as laughingstocks. From this
pulpit, interchangeable morons like “doctors” Oz, Phil, and
McCarthy are allowed to blindly stumble their way into the public
consciousness and peddle their crackpot ideas unchallenged, affecting
all of us by suppressing the acceptance of real information and
promoting superstitious fear in people seeking real answers. Compounding the damage is the danger presented by denialists like Mark Hyman, who publicly claim that autism is not genetic, and can be cured through diet and fluid supplementation. This
kind of predatory abuse should be shunned by us, and those who offer
it removed of anything resembling respectability, as the shameful
liar Andrew Wakefield rightfully was.
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