There has been a lot of discussion in the mainstream (and not-so-mainstream) media about the often-alleged, never-established connection between MMR vaccines and autism. (Even AHP has blogged about it once.) What is not so well known is that popular opposition to vaccination dates back to the beginnings of the procedure itself. Cotton Mather is well known for having endured vociferous opposition when he advocated inoculation against smallpox in 1720s Massachusetts. Most of Mather’s critics argued that inoculation spread small pox rather than stopping it, but some argued that, if inoculation worked, it amounted interference with God’s punishment of man. (Strangely, they didn’t believe this when it came to, say, setting broken bones or bandaging wounds.) Continue reading An Earlier Anti-Vaccination Movement
Tag Archives: vaccine
Data Linking MMR Vaccine to Autism “Fixed”
The Times of London is reporting that the data published in 1998 that set off a worldwide scare that the MMR vaccine was closely linked to the onset of autism in children was cooked by the article’s author, Andrew Wakefield.
According to the exclusive report:
The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab….
Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated…. Continue reading Data Linking MMR Vaccine to Autism “Fixed”