MEDICAL QUACKERY:

THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, A LYNCH MOB, AND VACCINES

By Nicholas Regush

My plan for today’s column was to write about how some medical students are beginning to resist free lunches provided by the drug industry. Yes, free lunches to the presumably naive, silly little girls and boys that will one day become big, devoted drug pushers.

But I’ll keep that one for another day because this week, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that will rank with the "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." Ever see that movie? You should because it was so bad that it became a legend. Now, we have a hummer in medicine that we can all go back to, time and again, for quiet reference, or zip out of the closet for angry demonstration. It will work for us either way.

The study (dare I call it that?) is really about how some grown-ups (maybe some naive, silly little boys who got free lunches at some point in their lives) are now big grownups, are doctors and are into what I call lynching. No, I didn’t say surgery, I said lynching.

Here is what the team did. They hovered around the internet and did a "content analysis" of what 22 vaccine-related sites were offering their visitors. I guess the whole idea was to do some bad sociology, throw science down the tubes for a while and have a grand time. Wow, look at this site, they are using little girls and boys and tearful mothers to create high drama for their gullible visitors. The visitors may actually even listen to some of what is being said by the people in the high drama, such as notions about children being hurt by vaccines.

Do children not get hurt from vaccines? Probably a ton of children, only there is a crappy surveillance system run by the government that gets a slow voluntary stream of reports.

The team also called the sites "anti-vaccination." Why? Because some people are opposed to the unbelievably bad research that passes for science. Quick, dirty studies that do not last long enough to determine much at all about the vaccine. Oh sure, the surveillance system will pick up the rest of the problems.

Most people I know are not opposed to vaccines per se - and I’m certainly not - but they are opposed to conflicts of interest, big money grabs by industry, forceful vaccination, and helter-skelter use of poorly-tested vaccines.

And there is a movement growing in America that will not be held back on any of these issues now.

At this time, when there are hundreds of vaccines in the pipeline and drug companies are looking to inject just about anything into a young child, here we have the "team" consisting of Robert Wolfe, Lisa Sharp, and Martin Lipsky conducting the dumbest research that I have ever personally come across in 30 years of medical reporting. It says a lot for the Journal of the American Medical Association for publishing such bilge.

Their conclusion in the study? Are you ready for this? "Anti-vaccination Web sites express a range of concerns related to vaccine safety and varying levels of distrust in medicine. The sites rely heavily on emotional appeal to convey their message.

Well here’s a message to Wolfe, Sharp and Lipsky from me:

Here’s my conclusion: You’ve created a true classic. My guess is that it will hang in there for a while.