AUTISM HOAX!

The purported link between childhood vaccines and autism is now revealed to have been an elaborate hoax!

In 1998, British physician Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a report tying autism to the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella.  His findings sparked a sea of controversy and caused an unknown amount of parents to believe he had discovered the reason for their child’s disorder.  In an attempt to help their autistic children, many parents chose to bypass having them vaccinated, which some health officials say  caused new outbreaks of formerly rare diseases.

But since his piece was published, the medical community remained adamantly against Wakefield’s conclusions, saying that his findings “suffered from serious ethical and medical lapses.” Now there are reports that Wakefield concocted the supposed connection between vaccines and autism even before he began to conduct his research, but after he was hired to participate in a legal case against a vaccine manufacturer.  Hmmm…

Not only did Wakefield’s bogus report cause unnecessary panic among concerned parents, but it also put the lives of millions of children at risk, since parents halted vital inoculations that were intended to protect them. “It was sad enough that the data in this paper was published and influenced scientists and governments and families to make decisions that just weren’t right,” said Keith A. Young, of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. ”But now to find out that the data was actually falsified makes it even worse. This really, really is one of the worst scenarios that’s ever happened with scientific misconduct.”