Vaccination & epidemic

[Clodfobble]

Since May of 2009? Ah, yes, I have had time to do more research since then, as has been extensively chronicled here in this thread. Part of that research has changed my opinion of the original MMR study, not based on the UK Medical Board or the British Medical Journal, but based on the opinions of the actual parents involved, which I read way back at the time the interviews were done.

To the best of my understanding, Wakefield fudged the data of his limited participant set for what he thought was a greater good, representing the literally thousands of other children with very similar experiences. Creating composite patients is not new or exclusive to Wakefield, but it is obviously wrong, and ultimately did more harm than good. But I absolutely stand behind him as a gastroenterologist who first widely publicized the connection between gastrointestinal disease and autism, and as an advocate who has stood by his initial association between vaccines and the symptoms of autism despite massive personal and professional loss. Were it not for Wakefield, the very clinic that I take my children to would not be open, and they and the 1000+ other patients they have seen would not be recovering and/or fully recovered. The original study did not just father the vaccine investigation, as Dana noted, it also fathered the investigation of what have turned out to be extremely effective treatment avenues. Wakefield is a flawed individual, as most of us are, and he took shortcuts that he never should have taken. He should have taken the time to make his initial study airtight, but he thought it was just the first of a long line of data to be collected and examined, he never realized the backlash to his tiny little study would be even a fraction of what it turned out to be, until it was too late.