More evidence of the worthlessness of Andrew Wakefield's "research"

Brian Deer strikes again

I had been wondering why the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism had been gearing up the slime machine against Brian Deer lately. For example, former UPI reporter turned vaccine/autism cran Dan Olmsted has been attacking the BMJ. As you recall, the BMGpublished Brian Deer's latest revelations earlier this year when he quite pithily and correctly referred to the now infamous (not to mention fraudulent and consequently retracted) 1998 Lancet case series published by vaccine/autism quack and crank Andrew Wakefield "Piltdown medicine." Particularly curious are the more recent articles, which try to cast doubt on Deer's reporting about Child 11, in essence calling Brian Deer a liar when he reported that Child 11's symptoms of autism developed before he got the MMR vaccine, hitting that theme a week ago and then again earlier this week. I had been curious why Olmsted had resurrected his putrid yellow journalism directed at Brian Deer, after not having added to the series (An Elaborate Fraud) since part 6 in August.

Now I know. It's a preemptive strike.

Just yesterday, the BMJ published another followup article by Deer entitled Pathology reports solve "new bowel disease" riddle that further elaborate on the the real "elaborate fraud," namely Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent research that ignited a scare about the MMR vaccine as a cause of regressive autism. It is a scare that has not yet abated, even nearly 14 years after the publication. It was a scare based on the claim by Wakefield that he had identified a new syndrome, which he later dubbed "autistic enterocolitis" in a followup paper in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. This syndrome, Wakefield suggested, was associated with vaccination with the MMR vaccine, and The Lancet paper, which linked autism and "autistic enterocolitis" with the MMR served as the basis of Wakefield's later claims that the MMR vaccine was a cause of regressive autism. Thirteen years and multiple studies later, no investigator not somehow associated with either Wakefield and/or the anti-vaccine movement has been able to replicate his work. Indeed, an explicit attempt to replicate Wakefield's work failed utterly. After all that time, there remains no persuasive evidence that such a syndrome as "autistic enterocolitis" even exists. Indeed, Deer found in his investigation that the vast majority of specimens that the gut was normal but only after a re-review by Wakefield's team were they described as abnormal.

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Mercy Hangover Cure

Those who work in the world of food and booze tend to make a hobby of trafficking in weird hangover cures of questionable efficacy. I've been advised to chase a heavy night of drinking with restoratives including a single salted, baked potato; saltines and Gatorade; a beverage forged from an unholy alliance of Tabasco and Alka-Seltzer; and a cocktail of various off-label, mail-order dietary supplements combined with all the coffee you can stomach. I have yet to find a wholly workable solution.

But living as we do in an era when there's a special drink for every purpose, why rely on homemade remedies? There are drinks on the market to get you drunk, wired, drunk-wired, tired, ultra-hydrated, skinny, or buff. The final frontier of functional imbibing, if you will, is a beverage that has the power to actually stop hangovers. And you can bet there are people investing money into finding it.

Should I Be Drinking Mercy?