Talk:MMR vaccine controversy

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[edit] Unbalanced change

This change added unnecessary and unbalanced text to the article. It is possible that the claims in question are controversial; if so, let's see the other side's counterclaims with citations to reliable sources. In the meantime, there are reliable sources for the claims in question, and the article should not disparage these claims by prepending "so-and-so said" to them. Any reader who wants to find out the sources can easily follow their citations, which say precisely who the source is. If you want the reader to find out more about Fitzpatrick's background, you can write an article about him and wikilink to that article, and put source claims about his background there; this article is not the place for them. Likewise for the NHS. (I have added a wikilink to the NHS in the first citation, to make this easier on the reader.) It's not like the claims in question are merely the opinion of Fitzpatrick or of the NHS. Eubulides 05:08, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pharma employee at work?

I have had an extremely difficult time adding information to the article on the MMR vaccine controversy; every time I add information on a study that tends to support the hypothesis that the MMR vaccine may be a factor in causing autism, another user removes this information, despite my complete, accurate sources (reputable news sources, I might add, like UPI). It seems likely that someone with a vested interest in keeping these studies quiet is deleting them in order to present a biased article, rather than a full account of all available information. I wonder if this is the work of a pharmaceutical employee. 24.215.244.23 02:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I briefly looked in the edit history to see what this is referring to. The most recent change made by your IP address is here. It causes the resulting page to be very poorly formatted; see here. Your contributions were reverted almost immediately by what appear to be several independent editors (including a bot, which rejected some changes as being vandalism, presumably due to the poor formatting). Certainly the last change that your IP address made wasn't right: it starts off by claiming that MMR contains thiomersal, which is incorrect. The general rule in Wikipedia is to assume good faith, which means that one should not immediately assume that a pharmaceutical employee is out to get you. Eubulides (talk) 21:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
This article IS very biased. --Pwnage8 (talk) 15:26, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
A POV tag on an article is not supported merely by saying "This article is very biased". It needs to be supported by an explanation of where the bias is. Is it the article's name? its structure? undue weight? tone? unfair characterization of sources? That sort of thing. It's also important to give reliable sources showing another point of view, suggest better wording, etc., etc. (Please see WP:NPOV for details.) Just saying "it's biased" does not suffice. A good-faith effort (noted above) was made to address all abovementioned objections; no reply was made. For now, I'm removing the POV template; if you have specific support for the claim that the article is POV (and ideally, suggestions for improving it) please feel free to restart this process. Eubulides (talk) 17:31, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
There's plainly no "pharma employee at work". All that's happened now is that some chunk of silliness that's circulating from the handful of crooks, quacks and idiots who've tried to turn a buck from faking a link between MMR and autism, has been swallowed whole by a contributor. The MMR controversy never had anything to do with thimerosal, didn't allege anything about anybody been "overwhelmed" or talk about other vaccines at all. It is true that in vaccine ligation the plaintiffs have sought to bolt together a whole bunch of different vaccine issues, but they've got nothing to do with the MMR issue, which is not unreasonably summarised on this page. 86.144.102.72 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 10:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clearer Labelling

After yet another study proving that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, shouldn't we move this article to a page with a clearer title? "Controversy" makes it sound like the issue hasn't been resolved or that this involves subjective options. I'm not sure what it would be called, but something with "hoax" in it would be clearest. Wikipedia may not be a corporation but we do need a bit of corporate responsibility here. If parents look up this article, it should be clear that Wakefield's allegation of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism is fradulant.

Baird G, Pickles A, Simonoff E et al. (2008). "Measles vaccination and antibody response in autism spectrum disorders". Arch Dis Child. doi:10.1136/adc.2007.122937. PMID 18252754. Lay summary – The Guardian (2008-02-05). 

The main article has more links to other studies carried out, again showing no statistical link between the vaccine and autism. -- Escape Artist Swyer Talk to me Articles touched by my noodly appendage 23:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Anecdotal Evidence

Personally I do not believe that there is a causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism, but I was curious about all the so-called documented evidence created by parents of kids with autism. I have read elsewhere that there have been parents who, mostly with video tapes and photos, are able to demonstrate that their child developed autism shortly after receiving the MMR vaccine. Supposedly there is an abundance of what could be described as anecdotal evidence about specific children being effected. I was just curious if anyone here has done the research into this body of evidence, because, whether or not that evidence is bogus, it seems noteworthy as a point of discussion to mention. I just figured that a blunt assesment of what anecdotal evidence exists, arising from the parents of autistic children, might add to the quality of the article. Has anyone looked into such 'evidence?' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.184.148 (talk) 00:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any reliable source on that topic with respect to MMR vaccine. Citations would be welcome. There is Rogers 2004 (PMID 15362172), but its abstract says "Although several studies have documented the validity of parental reports of regression using home videos, accumulating data suggest that most children who demonstrate regression also demonstrated previous, subtle, developmental differences." Eubulides (talk) 00:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The parents are regrettably falling for the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. (It's obvious to me that autism is caused by kids' first visit to McDonalds, because one follows shortly after the other!) -- Skierpage (talk) 03:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)