Dis-ease

British medical journal Lancet has retracted its 1998 study linking autism to vaccine. What will Jenny McCarthy do with her time now? Medical Journal Recants 1998 Study Linking Autism to Vaccine

A major British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease.

The retraction by The Lancet comes a day after a competing medical journal, BMJ, issued an embargoed commentary calling for The Lancet to formally retract the study. The commentary was to have been published on Wednesday.

The BMJ commentary said once the study by British surgeon and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues appeared in 1998 in The Lancet, “the arguments were considered by many to be proven and the ghastly social drama of the demon vaccine took on a life of its own.”

Since the controversial paper was published, British parents abandoned the vaccine in droves, leading to a resurgence of measles. Subsequent studies have found no proof that the vaccine is connected to autism, though some parents are still wary of the shot.

In Britain, vaccination rates for measles have never recovered and there are outbreaks of the disease every year.

Thus ends 10 years worth of unnecessary worrying by parents dreading the demon vaccine on the one hand, and the desperate hopes of families of autistics on the other. I don't think many people took the autism-vaccine link too seriously; when the only celebrity spokesman for your cause is Jenny McCarthy, it's almost self-refuting. Still, the idea that "vaccines cause autism" was something very much present in public discourse. It was something that people - especially young mothers - "heard" without knowing where from. It's doubtful that this retraction will have nearly as much penetration in the public consciousness as the original study. Thanks, guys.

Lancet is usually prefaced with the word "respected," but you have to wonder if that's possible. In addition to kick-starting the anti-vaccine movement, Lancet is also notorious for its "study" concluding that 600,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the 2003 invasion; another fact that has become socially "true" - in certain corners, you will hear the "one million Iraqi dead" - even as it was quickly shown to be demonstrably false. If Lancet ever published work on Climate Change, I'd say it's time to take a hard look at that as well.

Lancet has been playing a dangerous game of politicized science - and accusing vaccine makers of causing autism is certainly that, given the left's assault on Big Pharma - with real world consequences in that credulous moms without scientific training, but who rely on "settled science" for advise on how to protect their children, have made decisions that ended up harming their kids. If you are a parent whose child caught measles because you thought you were protecting her from autism, you should be very angry today. As for the desperate parents of autistic kids who saw this as an "explanation" for their kids' condition, you have been betrayed and exploited for the sake of headlines and grant money.

The only way to treat media reports of scientific breakthroughs: the bigger the headline, the less likely is it to be true.