I put this in the Dog House because I need to get off on a rant. The Lancet, a highly-respected British medical journal, had published a paper in 1998 relating autism to the MMR vaccine. http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/02....html?hpt=Sbin Recently, this paper was retracted.
Recently, poor ethical standards by the person conducting the research came to light. This risked the lives of thousands of children; some died from whooping cough.
The thing that really burns me is that the scientific illiteracy in the US has gotten to the point that people are willing to accept the much larger risk of dying from a preventable disease, instead of the tiny risk of side effects of a vaccine demonstrated to be safe and effective for the vast majority of the populations.
The FDA and other regulatory agencies are not perfect (they are run by human beings, after all!) but they do their best (most of the time) to ensure all marketed drugs, including vaccines, are safe.
Well, this kind of rambled on.
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