News: British Medical Journal Debunks Popular Study Linking Vaccines to Autism

"U.S. News & World Report states new findings in the British Medical Journal have repudiated a study done in 1998 linking autism and vaccinations. Andrew Wakefield allegedly

 altered the medical histories of five of the 12 children studied after an investigative journalist probed further into the case. Ten of Wakefield's 13 co-authors have renounced the findings and the journal Lancet has retracted the study published in its pages. Detractors of the study now say it wasn't bad science involved but a deliberate fraud."

Link to article

While this goes further to support my opinion, based upon the best existing scientific evidence, that vaccines have no causal effect on autism, this will do nothing to dispel the beliefs of the anti-vaccine crowd.  Andrew Wakefield could go live on television and admit that he doctored the evidence - it wouldn't shake their faith because for most of them its a belief bordering on religion.

*Warning-Sarcasm Alert for the Following*
"The British Medical Journal's continued war on Dr. Wakefield and his groundbreaking studies are further evidence of the scientific and medical community's desire to see that profits from the sales of vaccines are not diminished.  They have also clearly decided that, between the risk of autism and the risk of the illnesses that are being vaccinated against, the latter present a greater health risk to the general public.  Thus they are attempting to fool the public into believing that vaccines present NO risk for autism.  However, this is not their decision to make - it is the parents'."

Or something like that.