I’ve purposely phrased the headline in this post in the hopes that somewhere down the line someone who actually thinks that vaccines cause autism or some other parade of horrors in children. In February 2010, The Lancet retracted a 1998 study that linked vaccines to autism. Earlier this month, the British medical journal BMJ looked a bit deeper into the study and discovered that the study’s author falsified data in order to make millions of dollars on “diagnostic kits” and potential lawsuits against vaccine-makers.
Andrew Wakefield, the author of the now-discredited report should be charged with mass child abuse. Who knows how many thousands, or even millions, of children have been sickened or died because their parents believed this garbage. Most notable, of course is “actress” Jenny McCarthy who still stands by this discredited study. Appropriately enough there’s a Jenny McCarthy Body Count website.
But if there was any doubt that this anti-vaccination push is a load of crap designed to give some parents something to blame when the real culprit is something we call “life,” it’s this postcard (via Ace):
That’s right, Shaken Baby Syndrome (where doctors can see bruising on the brain in CAT scans), polio, allergies, asthma and polio are a result of vaccines! Because, as everyone knows, polio didn’t exist before a vaccine to wipe it out was created.
Parents: vaccinate your kids – you’ll have them around longer.
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