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Friday, 10 September 2004

Dr Andrew Wakefield is wrong.

I'd love to say that this won't come as a surprise to anybody, but, unfortunately, it will. So much so, in fact, that thousands, possibly millions, of people will simply refuse to believe it.

There is no evidence to support a link between the controversial MMR jab and the development of autism in children, researchers said today.


Of course, with all these conflicting claims, it can be difficult to know what to conclude. On the one hand, one doctor did some research on 12 children, concluded that the MMR jab causes autism, and had his research roundly criticised by pretty much every scientist who looked into it. On the other hand, many teams of researchers have done many studies over the last few years, all have concluded that there is no link between the MMR and autism, and none of that research has been debunked, culminating in this latest paper, which is based on studying nearly 1300 children. How on Earth are laymen supposed to cut through the scientific mumbo-jumbo and work out who to believe?
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:29 pm

    "How on Earth are laymen supposed to cut through the scientific mumbo-jumbo and work out who to believe?"

    Well they won't. But this is an instance where the consequences of being wrong are so awful that it is not really surprising that parents don't want to risk it.

    After all, it was OK to feed minced-up cows brains to other cows, wasn't it?

    I am truly glad that my children are past the age where I would have to make that decision

    Andrew Duffin

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  2. Squander Two4:27 pm

    > this is an instance where the consequences of being wrong are so awful that it is not really surprising that parents don't want to risk it.Sorry, Andrew, but what utter bollocks. None of these parents have the slightest hesitation when it comes to bundling their kids into the back of a car and going out for a drive. Every time they tell themselves, "No out-of-control lorry's going to plough into me today," the consequences of being wrong are indeed so awful that it wouldn't be surprising if no-one wanted to take that risk, but they do. Similarly, far too few parents seem to be at all worried about letting their kids get measles, mumps, or rubella. When it comes to well-known, studied, measured, quantified risks that parents know for a fact can kill their children, they appear not to give a shit.

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  3. Squander Two4:29 pm

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Squander Two4:31 pm

    (Blogger's comment formatting is bloody annoying, isn't it? Grr.)

    ReplyDelete

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