Monthly Archives: February 2009

Quick and dirty rebuttal of some of the canards in Jeni Barnett’s lamentable LBC Radio piece on MMR. We provide short answers and some links on various issues: formaldehyde, mercury and aluminium salts in vaccines; animal cells or foetal cell lines in vaccines; Simian Monkey Virus and putative links to cancer; the myth of the autism epidemic; myth of maverick doctors being silenced; myth of we want a study in the absence of understanding of the ethics of what they are describing; the fallacy of the perfect solution; stop vaccinating until all vaccines are 100% safe for everyone; myth of babies’ delicate immune systems being overloaded by vaccines; vaccine safety has been researched; vaccination is not linked to asthma; children with allergies may be vaccinated (after due discussion with appropriate health professionals); why media stories about side-effects are disproportionately powerful; some ethnographic and research studies that indicate educated, higher socio-economic groups are more likely to opt out of vaccination; what happens when you start vaccinating; the Unigenetics lab results were the bedrock of Andrew Wakefield’s research but its laboratory conditions at that time mean that its results were worthless which has implication for the research; homeopathy and vaccination; the myth of measles as a trivial childhood illness with some discussion of secondary infections and other outcomes. Continue reading →