Yes it can!

One of the big stories that caught my eye this week was that the 1998 report linking autism and the MMR vaccine wasn't just false but appears to have been deliberate fraud. I have so many thoughts in my head about this, I just have to share them individually:

1. If true that he fraudulently altered the study, the main author of the report, one Dr. Andrew Wakefield (and I use the word Doctor with a large grain of salt!) is a good example of evil -- the harm he has caused by falsely raising an alarm has not yet stopped parents from preventing the very beneficial MMR vaccine from being used. Is there anybody who doesn't know some parent who didn't immunize their children because of some belief that the MMR is harmful? I personally have two family members who made that choice for their children with at least support for their decision coming from this study.
2. Science really failed us here and I blame the mix of science, media and capitalism. The Lancet was (and still is) one of the most respected medical journals anywhere on the planet but up until this story it was one I thought to be published by a medical association. It is supposed to provide cutting-edge information that can be trusted as truth, and yet they published this paper that has subsequently been shown to be fraudulent. While they have long since retracted the paper and 10 of the original 13 authors have renounced it, the facts remain that it was published and re-published by others probably thousands of times. I cannot see how this can looked at as anything but an abject failure of science.
   
   1. People who have not been taught about and/or do not understand the scientific method, how basic research is conducted, or otherwise been introduced to an acedemic viewpoint are naturally suspicious and skeptical of "science". We are all lied to everyday in many ways, from the mass-media, the commercials, the politicians and of course via the Internet, it would be naive of people to believe that somehow scientists are immune from this and are inherently trustworhty. The Lancet and those 10 of 13 authors should have understood this before they too readily agreed to publish that paper. It was bad science EVEN IF the data had been accurate, it only had 12 subjects and at best should have been a preliminary finding justifying a larger study and nothing else. If it had to be published it should have come with big banner ads on the article warning all readers of the dangers of such early findings, but it didn't and certainly the re-publishing of the study by the world's media failed to emphasize the dangers.
3. The science lovers of this world are all now banging their chests saying that the folks who believed this study are / were idiots who just look for conspiracies everywhere. Ironic because this story is a conspiracy story, it is just that the conspiracy in this case is not Big Pharma but apparently those who were trying to sue Big Pharma. This story proves that such conspiracies do exist and that the public SHOULD be skeptical, clearly some scientists are corrupt ... this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody because scientists are people no different from other people.
4. Whilst I am glad that the MMR vaccine has proven to be safe (something that common-sense told me many years ago) and I trust the science behind that, I am not willing to use that information as a blanket "everything Big Pharma does is good" statement. The efficacy of the MMR vaccine does not effect in any way the efficacy of the H1N1 Flu vaccine nor even that such a vaccine need exist. And just as importantly, Mumps, Measles, and Rubella are quite a bit different than a new, speculative, and little known or understood flu virus.
   
   1. Hindsight provides a very clear lens, H1N1 was not even remotely close to the danger posed by any of the viruses that the  MMR vaccine protects against; the H1N1 vaccine was rushed out without any of the many years of studies and clinical trials that came with the MMR, the version with the "adjunct" added was particularly understudied. It is abundantly clear to anybody looking that these two "vaccines" are not equivalent at all, to suggest otherwise is akin to listening to Hollywood celebraties as experts in food, shoes, or cars. Just because Big Pharma has done some good doesn't make Big Pharna good at all, just look at the trouble GlaxoSmithKlein have been involved in as an example (but they are not unique by any means).
5. There need not be and I highly doubt there was any grand conspiracy to this whole story, it just illustrates one of the biggest failings of our entire free-market society. Everybody from start to finish in this story had the wrong priorities, all were focused on the money they can make: clearly the 10 of 13 authors who renounced the paper didn't perform their job adequately, they didn't feel strongly about the paper or they would have done the necessary research before signing off, they waited until it was too late to do the appropriate due diligence. The Lancet utterly failed here and the only motivation I can come up with was to ensure headlines. The Lancet is published by Elsevier, a division of a public company called Reed Elsevier PLC and as a public company it has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder profits ... while the retraction of the story may not have been the best PR they could hope for, The Lancet has received a lot of publicity as a result of this story and I'm sure that has not been bad for business. I've no doubt that they wouldn't have published the story if they knew it was fraudulent, but at the same time I have to wonder whether a less profit-oriented publisher (like a medical association) might have been more prudent.

Anyway, I can't help but wonder if this whole situation could have been avoided if a proper ECM program were in place. I quote from the CBC article I read

"The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield's paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems.Deer also found that all the cases were variously misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children's parents."