LONDON - Dr. Andrew Wakefield is lauded as a hero for his 1998 study which showed that the MMR vaccine, which is given to children to ward off the measles, mumps and rubella, was linked to autism. That is, he might be lauded as a hero if his findings hadn’t been a total crock of shit.

The Times of London is instead making out Wakefield, a British physician, as some kind of jerk just because an investigation has revealed that the study was full of inaccuracies, misrepresentations and outright fabrications. Wakefield’s findings indicated a link between the vaccine, in combination with inflammatory bowel disease, and the onset of autistic symptoms in otherwise healthy children. Of course the study left out the fact that there were only 12 patients in the study, that the symptoms recorded in Wakefield’s published research conflicted with their actual medical records, and that several of the patients had been showing symptoms BEFORE they were immunized. But really, doctors doing medical research are extremely busy. Can we really expect them to have the time to check every tiny little fact and not make up total lies?

There were 56 cases of the measles in the UK in 1998, the year Wakefield published his story. Last year there were 1,348. Sure, Wakefield’s study probably caused untold numbers of children to not get proper vaccinations thereby exposing them to serious illness. But c’mon. It’s the measles. What’s the worst that could happen? I mean, other than the fact that 1 in 15 children with measles gets complications including pneumonia, meningitis, fits, encephalitis (swelling of the brain), blindness and brain damage. Oh, and death.

Yeah that’s right, death. So the kid-huggers over at “The Times” probably want you to focus on the boy who, in 2006, became the first person to die of the measles in 14 years. But what they don’t focus on is the fact that the study made Wakefield very famous and rich. If he hadn’t published it, could he have he have bilked truckloads of money from well-meaning autism activists for over a decade? That’s probably what they’d like over there at “The Times”, for Dr. Wakefield to be a non-famous, only moderately wealthy physician. Those heartless bastards.

Ok, so some kids got sick. Really sick. And one died. Oh, and then there’s the countless parents of severely ill autistic children who have been torturing themselves with guilt, thinking they caused their children’s disease by having them vaccinated. There’s that. But really, does “The Times” really expect us to believe that Andrew Wakefield is the first person ever to bend the rules, even fudge the truth, in order to get ahead at their job?

They must not follow American Politics over there.

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