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Editorial
Vaccine facts won't change minds
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Vaccine facts won't change minds
The final retraction of a study that seemed to show a connection between autism and a common childhood vaccination should be the end of the issue, but it won't.
Neither did the elimination of a mercury compound from the vaccines nine years ago, which, by the way resulted in no decline in autism, reduce the controversy.
On Tuesday, authoritative British medical journal The Lancet retracted a 1998 research paper that caused many parents to stop having their children immunized for fear they would contract autism from a common measles-mumps-rubella shot.
Among other flaws in the study, the author of the study, Dr Andrew Wakefield, accepted funding from lawyers for parents seeking to sue vaccine makers for damages. He was also found to have patented, in 1997, a measles vaccine that would succeed if the combined vaccine were withdrawn or discredited.
As a result of the 1998 study, vaccinations dropped and the number of measles cases in Britain soared.
Study after study has failed to show any link between vaccinations and autism, but many would rather believe conspiracy theories that feed on mistrust of authoritiess.
Children would be better served by receiving the recommended vaccinations and research funding would be better spent directed toward finding the true causes of autism.