Yet another population is learning why you shouldn’t trust Andrew Wakefield. There is a large Somali immigrant population in Minnesota, and unfortunately they’ve been targeted by antivaxers. As a result, their MMR uptake has plummeted, and now they’re in the midst of another measles outbreak. Andrew Wakefield screws yet another group.
To antivaxers, it’s always the vaccines. Now they’re claiming vaccines cause autism in dogs. The problem, of course, is that vaccines don’t cause autism in humans, and labeling dog behavior as “autistic” is problematic in the extreme.
Cranks love ’em: Cash “challenges” demanding that skeptics and scientists “prove” the scientific consensus. Of course, these challenges are always rigged.
Antivaccine studies never die, even if they are retracted. They rise to kill again.
Vaccine mandates for school used to be about as nonpartisan an issue as we had in the US. There was broad bipartisan support for policies to assure that children are vaccinated before they attend school, and it was a policy that worked for decades. Unfortunately, increasing politicization of vaccine policy threatens to destroy that consensus and undermine public health.
