Gee, how.......interesting.....

[patgund]

The whole MMR - Autism link controversy / myth has taken a new turn....

MMR doctor given legal aid thousands

"ANDREW WAKEFIELD, the former surgeon whose campaign linking the MMR vaccine with autism caused a collapse in immunisation rates, was paid more than £400,000 by lawyers trying to prove that the vaccine was unsafe.

The payments, unearthed by The Sunday Times, were part of £3.4m distributed from the legal aid fund to doctors and scientists who had been recruited to support a now failed lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers.

(Snip)

"Wakefield’s work for the lawyers began two years before he published his now notorious report in The Lancet medical journal in February 1998, proposing a link between the vaccine and autism.

This suggestion, followed by a campaign led by Wakefield, caused immunisation rates to slump from 92% to 78.9%, although they have since partly recovered. In March this year the first British child in 14 years died from measles.

Later The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s claim and apologised after a Sunday Times investigation showed that his research had been backed with £55,000 from lawyers, and that the children in the study used as evidence against the vaccine were also claimants in the lawsuit.

At the time Wakefield denied any conflict of interest and said that the money went to his hospital, not to him personally. No disclosure was made, however, of the vastly greater sums that he was receiving directly from the lawyers."

So, basically, it looks like the whole "connection" was an attempt by lawyers to try and build up a case for a lawsuit??

Gahhh.......

Comments

[henglaar.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder at the sequence of events, just for my own satisfaction. It's a heinous act either way, but I wonder: did the lawyers already have a lawsuit going when they asked scientists to create "evidence" to support their case? Or did they decide to have the scientists create the "evidence" so they could then file a suit?

What I hate the most is that scientists could be convinced to actually pervert their science to the support of myth. (One of my particular hatreds is the perversion of science to create the illusion that Intelligent Design/Creationism is a valid scientific theory.)