Posts Tagged ‘vaccine’
British Doctor Faked Data Linking Vaccines to Autism, and Aimed to Profit From It
Andrew Wakefield, who has been stripped of his medical license and whose study has since been retracted, explored business opportunities designed to capitalize on his fraudulent findings, according to the BMJ. The businesses were intended to earn huge sums of money in Britain and the U.S. — up to $40 million a year — by providing unique diagnostic services to test for the presence of measles in patients with Crohn’s disease.
Wakefield planned to develop his own supposedly safer vaccines after public fears were sufficiently stoked, according to the report, a two-part investigation by British investigative journalist Brian Deer. He outlines how Wakefield accepted fees from a lawyer who eventually filed (and lost) an autism-vaccine lawsuit.
The story also describes how the Royal Free Medical School in London supported Wakefield, who wrote an 11-page business plan while his first patient was still in the hospital.
The scheme was predicated on a link among vaccines, autism and bowel problems.
Wakefield’s 1998 paper in The Lancet claimed a link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, launching an international backlash against childhood vaccinations. But the research was discredited by follow-up studies, and none has ever established a link between vaccinations and autism. The Lancet in February 2010.
Last week, Deer also outlined in Wakefield’s data, including the nugget that his study included data from 12 children but he studied at least 13, including some who showed symptoms of autism before they were vaccinated.
Wakefield told CNN the allegations were false: “The findings that we have made have been replicated in five countries around the world,” he said.
Wakefield’s research has been widely discredited, but he is a hero to a small, vocal cadre of supporters who believe the medical establishment has been trying to silence him. Now that they know he’s been exposed as a huckster as well as a fraud, perhaps they will think twice.
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Study Turns Up Viral Key That Might Lead to Universal Flu Treatment
The influenza A virus contains eight individual single-stranded RNA segments, each of which has to make protein as well as new segments, in processes called transcription and replication. The multitasking strands must prioritize their work, so they must start with transcription and move on to replication. Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York figured out how to prevent RNA from starting the replication process. Their results were published June 1 online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Using a novel process called deep sequencing, the team found a small viral RNA segment, or svRNA, that is integral to the change. Inhibiting the svRNA from doing its work stymies replication, and therefore slows the spread of the virus.
Even better, influenza A shares this trait with its viral cousins, influenza B and C, meaning the svRNA switch can be used to stop all kinds of flu -- even the H1N1 flu. As an added bonus, if the virus is prevented from replicating, it stays in transcription mode and produces more proteins. This helps the body's immune system build up its defenses, according to Benjamin tenOever, an assistant microbiology professor at Mount Sinai and a study author.
The process used to make this discovery is also groundbreaking, the researchers say. The deep sequencing allowed the scientists to obtain millions of small RNAs from cells in an unbiased fashion, according to a Mount Sinai release.
The next step is to find a way to introduce RNA "antagonists" to inhibit the svRNA's switch function, tenOever says. That's still a long way off, but the knowledge that RNA can be switched off means that a universal flu treatment is a possibility.
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