Money is the Root of All Evil

I've been following the debate of vax vs. no-vax since my oldest son was young...long before there was a Sam. When my middle child, Jay, was born, it was in the heat of the vax vs. no vax debates and the Wakefield furor was in full swing. I well-remember the long, passionate debates on various parenting boards about the evil things that vaccinations could do and how terrible parents were for poisoning their children. I wondered then how anyone could possibly believe that a vaccination could cause autism or how an entire industry could be in some sort of conspiracy to cover up this poisoning. Being selfish, I was horrified at the thought of parents letting their children go around at risk for carrying disease and exposing my children and me to who knows what. And I wondered--what will come of this. When will this end?

And now, the infamous Dr. Andrew Wakefield who kicked up all the fuss in the beginning is facing all manner of professional woes as a result of the claims he made linking autism to the MMR vax in 1998. Wakefield, who oops, forgot to mention that 11 of the 12 subjects of his study were suing the vaccine maker and that he was, oops again, being paid by their legal firm, sent parents into a panic around the UK and the world with his little "study" and vaccination rates plummeted.
He got what he needed, though.He was a star and his case was, to an extent, made, or so he thought, I suppose. I wonder

"There was
never
one shred of verified evidence in his work...no basis whatsoever for his claim."
Brent Taylor, Royal Free medical school

if he really thought that his little paper in The Lancet would have the impact that it did? Or that so many people would jump on board with both feet in such a manner? But jump, they did. His peers, jumped, too, though, and some of the other authors of the study jumped right off the paper. He stuck to the story though. For six years. And people believed. Funny how the autism rate didn't plummet, though. Of course, there were any manner of excuses for that, and there were studies and God only knows how much research money was poured into trying to duplicate Wakefield's results or to come up with something to validate his claim.

But, even though the truth behind Wakefield's affiliations was eventually revealed by The London Times in 2004, the damage was done. That's what happens when a conspiracy takes root. By then it was too late. Autism and

"The long-term
consequences of inadequate control of gonadal steroid secretions are
unknown..."
Product Insert, Lupron

mercury and the treatment thereof were a cottage industry and you know what that means, don't you? Money. A boatload of it and don't for one minute think that anyone who has been making money off of any number of insanely expensive treatments that would never have been considered, much less approved by the average soccer mom, is going to be stopped by something like a few pesky facts. The treatments and protocols and practioners increase annually. There are studies and charities and foundations and reports and petitions. You can travel across the country to any number of treatment facilities to spend thousands of dollars on experimental ideas. Meanwhile, on the internet, self-proclaimed Institutional Review Board in Maryland approves the study done by its own members...members who propose using Lupron, among other things, to help chelate mercury from children. Lupron, btw, for those who don't know, is also used for chemical castration, treatment of prostate cancer and endometriosis. I'm sure it isn't cheap, either. And I'm guessing the doctor visits--or whomever is prescribing this stuff--aren't free either. But it's a business.


And so it grows.

But in the UK, the measles do, too.