I wanted to comment on the ever-brilliant Orac’s recent commentary on Dr. Wakefield, the charlatan who claimed the link existed between vaccines and autism who has recently been paddled by the General Medical Council in London for these claims and had his original Lancet article retracted. I would strongly recommend you read it and the Huffington Post article which it¬†is in response¬†to. All caught up? Great!

Orac’s point is a good one. We are¬†thinking of¬†the children. As he says, every child who dies of a vaccine-preventable illness, whether it’s due to not being vaccinated or being in an area with low herd immunity, is a child they wanted to spare from that fate. But this is the kind of thinking that the anti-vaccine movement has always embraced.

For my part, I was really angry when I read the HuffPo piece. Censorship is a word that gets used almost as much as toxin in the conversation about vaccines, and that’s hilarious to me. The conversation almost exclusively happens in the public eye, on all manner of media. Censoring something means preventing it from being expressed, and no one on earth can honestly say that this is the case. As Orac points out, the author of the article has a paying gig at HuffPo to basically foam on and on about the issue, has a book, and gets to go on TV. She is not a victim of censorship. Dr. Wakefield is not censored either. We damn near hear every¬†crackpot word out of his quack lips, especially those of us who pay attention to this issue.

Dr. Wakefield’s work has not stood up to scrutiny. Now, neither do his methods. It’s quite a terrifying and lengthy document that describes the findings of this panel, and if you’re up for it, I’d suggest giving it a read. There was no censorship in play in the groups findings. But it’s an easy appeal for those whose mouths flap so heartily to imply that disagreeing with someone is the same as censoring them.

There is no causal link that we can see between vaccines and autism. There is certainly a correlational link, in that the MMR vaccine is administered at approximately the time when autism first shows it’s symptoms. However, there is a strong difference between things happening around the same time and one causing the other. I’m reminded of a story I once heard about Bono from U2 playing a gig somewhere. The band went silent and he began to clap slowly. He said, “Every time I clap my hands, a baby dies,” or something to that effect. Someone smartly shouted out “STOP CLAPPING YOUR HANDS!”

It is an outright lie to say that Dr. Wakefield is being censored. At no point has he been told not to speak out on his opinions on the subject to my knowledge. However, he is often shouted down by the deluge of evidence to the contrary of his opinion. That is not censorship, that is open dialogue. To paint it in any other ways shows the cunning of the anti-vax crowd. Their goal is to promote their opinion and cut out all dissenting voices, and they won’t let facts or figures stand in their way. And as much as it sucks, they have every right to do it. They’re allowed to lie. But we’re allowed to point those lies out. That’s hardly censorship.

Jim