Lies, Damned Lies, Medicine

A series of articles have been published in BMJ to recount the web of lies meticulously weaved by a British physician (Andrew Wakefield) who created, out of thin air, a nonexistent link between vaccines and autism from falsified patient records and data. His goal? Personal financial gains from lawsuits against companies that make vaccines and from his own patented vaccine.

One man, driven by greed, aided by the ignorance, stupidity, and mob mentality of the masses, single-handedly cost health care agencies around the world billions and billions of dollars, an unknown number of lives of children whose parents believed (and more still believe) this fake claim that vaccines cause autism and refused to vaccinate them, and all the wasted years of effort and resources that could have been spent on something that is real.

Here is BMJ's editorial. Here is the article by Brian Deer, the journalist who doggedly collected all the evidence to prove Wakefield's lies, lies, lies.

I am often reminded of the question posed to a certain junior senator from Wisconsin who suddenly became the most feared and therefore most powerful politician of his time: "Do you have no decency?"