A Reminder That The Lancet is Partly to Blame for the Destruction That Kennedy Has Wrought
A little reminder about who's to blame for surging measles cases...
Did you see the new cover of The Lancet in which they call out Secretary Kennedy for his failures and for damaging our public health and science institutions?
While well deserved, it neglected to include their own role in helping create this mess and the modern anti-vaccine movement!
A Reminder That The Lancet is Partly to Blame for the Destruction That Kennedy Has Wrought
No, I’m not saying that The Lancet is solely responsible for creating the modern anti-vaccine movement…
“I cannot ask one who supports the controversial paper to read this posting and change your mind and unring the bell that the Lancet article clanged in 1998. It would be naive of me to claim that no vaccine has ever been correctly associated with causing a particular disease. However, in this case, what Wakefield and Lancet did in 1998 is akin to screaming fire in a crowded theater. Without proper medical and scientific research to support his findings, he and Lancet acted irresponsibly by releasing such information without proper “fact-checking” as we call it these days.”
Making Sense Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield Now
But Andy Wakefield’s 1998 ‘study’ that was published in The Lancet, and the media frenzy that went with it, was certainly a big trigger.
A few years later, we had Dan Burton’s Congressional hearings trying to prove that there is a link between vaccines and autism.
And Cindy Crawford appearing on Good Morning America with her pediatrician, Jay Gordon, talking about how she was delaying her child’s vaccines.
Soon, RFK Jr would be publishing his error laced expose Deadly Immunity in Salon and Rolling Stone, having been inspired by mothers who blamed vaccines for causing their kids to become autistic.
Of course, we would also soon see Jenny McCarthy on Oprah talking about the autism shot!
And let’s not forget Bob Sears, one of the first pediatricians to promote a made up immunization schedule to scare anxious parents away from getting fully vaccinated and protected.
Did The Lancet Create Andrew Wakefield?
Still, although there is plenty of blame to go around, it is hard to not think that without The Lancet publishing Andy Wakefield’s fraudulent study, then we might not be in this mess…
But weren’t they fooled into publishing it too?
“By publishing Andrew Wakefield and colleagues' work purporting to show a link between MMR vaccination and inflammatory bowel disease and autism and related problems you give increased credence to their report. The Lancet is a prestigious, peer reviewed journal with high public profile. The profession, journalists, the public, and especially distressed parents of ill children suppose that a publication in your journal will be true. In this example you print a commentary, which if it had been a peer reviewer's report, should have led to the rejection of the paper.”
Correspondence Autism, inflammatory bowel disease, and MMR vaccine
AJ Beale
Although Wakefield’s fraud wasn’t uncovered until later, we saw immediate criticism of the study!
“To prove a causal relation is much harder—it requires a selection of patients and matched controls, and a sample size that is capable of detecting a statistically significant difference between the two groups. The investigators may need to be blinded for such aspects as clinical assessments and laboratory tests. How does Wakefield’s study match up? There was no patient selection other than 12 patients referred to him. There were no controls. There was no blinding of investigators. The accompanying commentary by Robert Chen and Frank DeStefano elegantly explains the difference between temporal and causal association. We concur with them that Wakefield’s study fails at every level to make a causal association.”
Correspondence Autism, inflammatory bowel disease, and MMR vaccine
David Black ∙ Henry Prempeh ∙ Tony Baxter
A study that should never have been published in a reputable medical journal.
“The epidemiological flaws in this latest paper concerning autism have also been well rehearsed.”
Correspondence Autism, inflammatory bowel disease, and MMR vaccine
Keith J Lindley ∙ Peter J Milla
What makes this all even worse?
“The account given by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues' is interesting, yet the structure of the study with biased case ascertainment and no suitable controls makes the findings no more than anecdotal. Perhaps the only saving grade for The Lancet is the accompanying well balanced commentary.”
Correspondence Autism, inflammatory bowel disease, and MMR vaccine
Sarah J O’Brien ∙ Ian G Jones ∙ Peter Christie
The Lancet actually knew about all the problems with Wakefield’s study, and they published it anyway! Problems that were spelled out in a commentary, Vaccine adverse events: causal or coincidental?, that was published in the same issue.
Not only that, but they doubled down on their decision to publish Wakefield’s study!
“First, the decision to publish. There was no question in my mind that, subject to external peer review and editorial debate, we should publish this work.”
Autism, inflammatory bowel disease, and MMR vaccine
Editor’s Reply
But this was nearly 30 years ago…
“Finally, what has been the outcome? In particular, has harm been done?”
Autism, inflammatory bowel disease, and MMR vaccine
Editor’s Reply
Shouldn’t we just let it go by now?
Not on your life!
And not on the lives of all the kids who have ended up with measles and measles complications because their parents were scared away from getting vaccinated and protected.
The first ridiculous assumption was that IBD and autism are causally related
"... it is hard to not think that without The Lancet publishing Andy Wakefield’s fraudulent study, then we might not be in this mess…"
That's because you're not much of a thinker. You forgot to rant about craven piece of shit Prasad today.