The Pathological Optimist – vaccine fraud Andrew Wakefield documentary

I was having a peaceful evening. I fired up my Apple TV to watch the Trailers app to see upcoming movies that I might watch. Unfortunately, right at the top row, I see Andrew Wakefield’s face on the trailer for a new documentary about him, “The Pathological Optimist“.

Why would anyone want to see another documentary about this man? Well, it’s horror film season, and Wakefield is one scary man.

In 2016, we got his self-serving fraudumentary, “Vaxxed,”... The Pathological Optimist – vaccine fraud Andrew Wakefield documentary

The Pathological Optimist: More hagiography than documentary about Andrew Wakefield – Science-Based Medicine

The Pathological Optimist is a recently released documentary by Miranda Bailey about Andrew Wakefield that I got a chance to see. In interviews and in the film’s promotional materials, Bailey takes great pains to emphasize that she “doesn’t take a side” about Wakefield. Unfortunately, her film demonstrates that, when it comes to pseudoscience, “not taking a side” is taking a side, and that a film’s bias is often more evident in... The Pathological Optimist: More hagiography than documentary about Andrew Wakefield – Science-Based Medicine

What is fake news? – Lynne McTaggart, Wakefield fan, explains

This was a blog post committed by the Blessed Lynne (Saint & Martyr)™, of WDDTY infamy, back in May of this year. The only reason I’ve left it so long is that I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to excoriate the fuckwittery within, which basically consists of whining, ego, antivax stupidity and defending arch-arsehole Andrew Wakefield. No beating about the bush with witty preamble for once; let us fire up the trusty WTFometer and see what transpires.

Broadcast journalism has landed many low blows before when it comes to alternative views about medicine. 

On the contrary, it tends to be inadvisably tolerant of unproven and unscientific braindribble.

I was eight months pregnant with our first child when we launched WDDTY, and a few moments before I was due to have a live debate with a media doctor, he leaned over and murmured, sotto voce: ‘Did you know that your obstetrician was … 

Read the full story at: What is fake news? – Lynne McTaggart, Wakefield fan, explains

Vaccines: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

The benefits of vaccines far outweigh the minuscule risks, but some parents still question their safety. John Oliver discusses why some people may still feel uncertainty about childhood vaccinations.

Just(in) asking questions

This is probably the last post I’ll write about Justin Kanew. The first post is here, and the second is here. In the first post, I explained to you how Mr. Kanew was slowly descending into anti-vaccine world. In the second, the conversion was nearly complete. So complete, in fact, that Andrew Wakefield was given […]

Read more at: Just(in) asking questions by Reuben

Just(in) the way Andrew Wakefield likes them

Pretend in your mind that you’re a grifter, a con man, a snake oil salesman. What kind of person is your target? Would you use your theatricality and deception on someone who knows better? Of course not. I am yet to hear of an oncologist with cancer who buys into alternative medicine to cure said […]

Read more at: Just(in) the way Andrew Wakefield likes them by Reuben

Andrew Jeremy Wakefield wants rabies back

Known fraud and former physician, Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, recently had a picture taken of himself with a dog and a sign. Here it is: Tip of the hat to Ren, who found the picture on Facebook. Andrew Wakefield seems to be the kind of person who has gone so far off the deep end in […]

Read more at: Andrew Jeremy Wakefield wants rabies back by Reuben

Andrew Wakefield’s biggest mistake (this month)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably missed all the commotion over ex-Doctor Andrew Jeremy Wakefield’s anti-vaccine film being utterly rejected from the Tribeca Film Festival. Seriously, his 1998 case study of a handful of children which concluded that vaccines do not cause autism should have been rejected just as quickly. But beggars […]



Read more at: Andrew Wakefield’s biggest mistake (this month) by Reuben

Let me tell you a story…

Spoiler alert: This story does not have a happy ending.

Back in 1932, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) decided that it would be a good idea to understand the natural history of syphilis infections. They wanted to know what happened to a human body when the infection took place, from beginning to tragic […]



Read more at: Let me tell you a story… by Reuben

The dangerous game played by Hooker and Wakefield

When Brian S. Hooker and Andrew Jeremy Wakefield decided that they were going to play the “CDC Whistleblower” game, they and their minions decided to lie and misinform African Americans with the idea that the MMR vaccine was causing more autism in African American children than in other groups. They have gone so far so as to line themselves up with the Nation of Islam, and so we have these statements from NoI leaders saying that CDC “poisoned” Black and Hispanic children.

This is a very dangerous game that the anti-vaccine high priests are playing […]


Read more at: The dangerous game played by Hooker and Wakefield by Reuben

The money behind the antivaccine movement

The post The money behind the antivaccine movement by Anarchic Teapot first appeared on Plague of Mice.
This is good. Oh, this is good. A CNN journalist follows the money.

Autism is linked to gut problems (so sorry, Andy Wakefield) | WWDDTYDTY

Of all the persecuted Brave Maverick Doctors in WDDTY’s pantheon, none is more Brave or indeed more Maverick than Saint Andrew of Wakefraud.

 Put simply, WDDTY desperately wants Wakefield to have been right, and will miss no opportunity to rewrite history in the service of this delusion.

As much as the medical community likes to discredit Andrew Wakefield for his theory about the MMR link to autism, research keeps supporting his central argument: autism is somehow related to the gut...

Read on: Autism is linked to gut problems (so sorry, Andy Wakefield) | WWDDTYDTY

It’s a small world after all!

When Andrew Jeremy Wakefield told us that it was his gut feeling that the MMR vaccine caused autism, I doubt that he had any idea of what he was about to unleash on the world. I really don’t think that he wanted to trigger outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in places where vaccines had suppressed those […]

Read more at: It’s a small world after all! by Reuben

WDDTY on: Andrew Wakefield - WWDDTYDTY

If there’s one figure the anti-vaccination movement idolises, it’s the struck-off former doctor and research fraudster Andrew Jeremy Wakefield. As a trailblazer for the anti-vaccination movement, Wakefield is widely identified as being responsible for current outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease, causing serious harms and deaths...

Read on: WDDTY on: Andrew Wakefield - WWDDTYDTY

All the fail you can fit into an infographic

Friends on social media pointed me to this infographic the other day. It states that it wants to “set the record straight” on vaccines and autism, and it uses all of the tricks that we know anti-vaccine cult members use to try and deceive those who are uninitiated. So let’s take it one panel at a time and dissect this thing for all the fail that it is...

Read more at: All the fail you can fit into an infographic by Reuben

MMR mother lied over vaccine injury | Brian Deer

A British “mother warrior”, who claimed that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is responsible for autism, fabricated accounts of injury to her son and persistently lied about his health, a London court has ruled.

The mother, “E”, who cannot be named so as to protect her son’s identity, concocted a story about how he reacted to an MMR shot in January 1991. She said that he became distressed with fever and then lost speech, eye contact and play immediately following his three-in-one at the age of 18 months.

She claimed that he screamed after immunization, and that this was followed by six hours of convulsions and vomiting, and then six months in a “persistent vegetative state”.

But in a landmark 45,000-word judgment, which entered the public domain from the Court of Protection last week, the mother was dismissed as a manipulative liar. It was found that she had made up the story so as to bring attention to herself and had plied her developmentally delayed son, "M", with a mass of sometimes bizarre "biomedical" interventions so as to gain "total control" over his life.

"The critical facts established in this case can be summarized as follows," said High Court judge Mr Justice Baker. "M has autistic spectrum disorder. There is no evidence that his autism was caused by the MMR vaccination. His parents' account of an adverse reaction to that vaccination is fabricated."

Read the full report here, with links to Court judgements, etc: MMR mother lied over vaccine injury

How to end a scientist’s career with some fancy editing

I’ve been taking extra strength exedrin today, all day. I have this nagging headache. See, I get these headaches when I hear people lying. It’s like a superpower, except that it hurts worse as I hear more stupidity. The “Thinking Moms” decided that they were going to have a “Twitter Party.” Well, they don’t know how twitter works. They thought that creating an echo chamber of anti-vaccine people repeating the same hashtag (#CDCwhistleblower) would make said hashtag trend and attract regular Twitter users to their message of anti-vaccine madness. That’s not how it works. For something to trend and be featured on Twitter, you need to have a lot of individual people using that hashtag in their conversation. A dozen people writing it a thousand times has an impact factor of 12, whereas twelve-thousand people tweeting it just once has an impact factor of 12,000...

Read more at: How to end a scientist’s career with some fancy editing by Reuben

Andrew Jeremy Wakefield plays video director while African-American Babies die, or something

Let’s say that I have a secret. Well, not that I have the secret but more like I discovered a secret. Let’s say that it is a secret so heinous that telling it to the world may change the world or, at the very least, save a lot of lives. And let’s say that I’ve vetted the information contained in that secret and I have found it to be true. Do I…

Read more at: Andrew Jeremy Wakefield plays video director while African-American Babies die, or something by Reuben

Then we’ll just have to fight, won’t we?

There’s a scene in “The Dark Knight Rises” where Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, tells Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, that “there’s a storm coming.” The scene starts off innocently enough with the aged Bruce Wayne showing up at a high-society party. There, he ends up seeing Ms. Kyle and asking her to dance. He deduces that […]

Read more at Then we’ll just have to fight, won’t we? by Reuben