Saturday, February 13, 2010

I'm not sure how reputable the New York Post is, it always seems a bit tabloidy to me, but they had a pretty interesting column on the Lancet's retraction of the Wakefield paper (that originally suggested a link between autism and the MMR vaccine.) Not mincing words it is called: Junk Science Kills: Who'll apologize to dead kids. The last sentence is something I was trying to say in class on Friday, albeit less succinctly.

Even with the retraction, the widespread rumors of a vaccine-autism link will prevail: The broader anti-vaccine movement is alive and well, albeit without a shred of evidence to support their case. As the chief of Infectious Disease at Philadelphia Children's Hospital, Dr. Paul Offit, reflected sadly, "This retraction by Lancet came far too late. It's very easy to scare people; it's very hard to unscare them."

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