{"id":274149,"date":"2010-02-03T15:32:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18884161.post-732204347794332538"},"modified":"2010-02-08T16:24:03","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T21:24:03","slug":"the-asymmetry-of-fear-junk-science-coupled-with-zealotry-can-cause-widespread-misery-but-good-intentions-dont-resuscitate-the-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/274149","title":{"rendered":"The asymmetry of fear: Junk science coupled with zealotry can cause widespread misery, but good intentions don’t resuscitate the victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unscaring Not as Easy as Scaring<\/strong><\/p>\n

February 3rd, 2010<\/p>\n

A Wall Street Journal<\/em> article about The Lancet’s<\/em> retraction of Dr. Wakefield’s spurious 1998 paper linking vaccines to autism quotes ACSH Advisor and chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Dr. Paul Offit, who said, \u201cThis retraction by The Lancet<\/em> came far too late. It’s very easy to scare people; it’s very hard to unscare them.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThat was our reaction as well,\u201d says Dr. Whelan. \u201cWe’re bothered by media coverage given to this retraction. They act as if this article was printed last week. The misleading and unscientific article in question was published twelve years ago, and The Lancet<\/em> never apologized for it. They didn’t even retract it of their own volition; they waited until the General Medical Council condemned it. And despite the fact that it was retracted, we have a quote in the Wall Street Journal from the president of the National Autism Association saying it’s still possible that the MMR vaccine causes autism.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cEven now, Lancet editor Richard Horton fails to accept responsibility for the human toll he allowed by publishing the Wakefield ‘study’ in 1998,\u201d says Dr. Ross. \u201cThe study — even without the then-unknown ethical failings — was a terribly unscientific piece of garbage, based on twelve children and using a ‘novel’ theory of causation and flimsy ‘evidence.’ Even when ten of the original thirteen authors withdrew their names, Horton declined to either withdraw the article or accept his own guilt for the ravages of preventable childhood diseases following the havoc he allowed to occur. <\/p>\n

\u201cIronically, the anti-vaccine hysteria against MMR vaccine spurred by Wakefield and The Lancet morphed into anti-thimerosal hysteria. Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative, now banished from vaccines due to this baseless fear. Yet, MMR never contained thimerosal — the scapegoat in these superstitious attacks seems to vary depending which side of the ocean you’re on.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe overarching lesson here is critical,\u201d says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. \u201cWhen a widely respected medical journal publishes a scare story, the scare still may be unfounded. It may take years for the record to be corrected, and the consequences of the precautionary principle could be deadly.\u201d<\/span><\/strong> <\/p>\n

From BPA, Lancet Lateness, Harm Reduction, Salt Reduction <\/p>\n

By Curtis Porter, in ACSH Dispatch<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

See also<\/p>\n

FEBRUARY 3, 2010.British Medical Journal Retracts Autism Study<\/a> ..<\/p>\n

By SHIRLEY S. WANG, WSJ<\/p>\n

The study that first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, acrimonious debate over the safety of vaccines has been retracted by the British medical journal that published it…<\/p>\n

…”Many consumer groups have spent 10 years waging a campaign against vaccines even in the face of scientific evidence,” said Dr. Horton of the Lancet. “We didn’t have the evidence back in 2004 to fully retract the paper but we did have enough concern to persuade the authors to partly retract the paper.”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Horton said the journal was particularly concerned about the ethical treatment of the children in the study, and that the children had been “cherry-picked” by the study’s authors rather than just showing up in the hospital, as described in the paper.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong><\/p>\n

WSJ Media center video<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Pundit’s opinions:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Horton’s misjudgments on MMR vaccine led to a decade of harm. His actions on the infamous Pusztai GM-potato paper were totally his responsibility, and continue to do harm after a decade of un-necessary delay.<\/p>\n

See Pusztai details at an earlier Pundit posting:<\/p>\n

Rats fed bad diets have lots of changes in their guts.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unscaring Not as Easy as Scaring February 3rd, 2010 A Wall Street Journal article about The Lancet’s retraction of Dr. Wakefield’s spurious 1998 paper linking vaccines to autism quotes ACSH Advisor and chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Dr. Paul Offit, who said, \u201cThis retraction by The Lancet came far too late. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}