The Vaccine Verdict

There's a new book out, called Denialism, by Michael Specter, which outlines the country's irrational and obstinate denouncement of sound scientific theory in favor of accepted norms. We see it in the fight over global warming (termed "climate change" by those wanting it to sound less threatening) or the new battles over health care; and now I suspect that we'll continue to hear that vaccines are dangerous. Today, the British journal The Lancet retracted its publishing of Andrew Wakefield's findings on the connections between a common childhood vaccine and the onset of Autism. For years, Wakefield has preached his findings to anxious and caring parents of children with Autism worldwide, all the while hiding or downplaying his questionable and unethical research.

I speak, of course, from a non-parent of a child with autism, and I do not want to oversimplify the issues, but I can only imagine the difficulty in accepting one's being taken in by a charlatan like Wakefield. Is it unfair to liken his so-called science to the tonic hawkers of old?