bogleech:

iesika:

dollsahoy:

bogleech:

Many people know that vaccines were linked to autism by a fraud and con artist who just wanted to sell his own alternative vaccines.

What a lot of people DON’T know is that he had no reason to choose autism for this scam except that it had JUST started entering mainstream consciousness and was still barely understood by most people. He took advantage of ignorance and confusion already surrounding a hype train and it could have been anything but it happened to be Autism at that particular time.

That’s how fucking meaningless the connection is.

Wakefield didn’t just claim it caused autism–he also claimed it caused an inflammatory bowel disease.  That didn’t quite capture the public imagination the same way, though…

gonna remind everyone reading this that Wakefield lost his medical license for behaving “dishonestly and irresponsibly,” his papers were pulled as being 100% fraudulent, and he left the UK in utter disgrace before coming to the US to peddle his bullshit. He’s also known for such stellar moves as inviting children to his son’s birthday party then drawing their blood to use in his “study.”

Tying in with the previous poster’s addition, he’s also a lot of the reason people started associating autism with the gut in various quack pseudosciences that have tried to convince you to buy their special diet plan to “control” autism.

Unfortunately I know from tons of experience that American anti-vaxxers consider both “driven from the UK” and “kicked out of the medical community” to mean “COOL RELATABLE UNDERDOG DEFYING THE EVIL ESTABLISHMENT”