Andrew Wakefield and the Mmr Autism Fraud

ANDREW WAKEFIELD AND THE MMR AUTISM FRAUD In February 1998, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, published a research paper in which he linked autism and bowel disease to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine – creating a public health crisis in England and raising questions about vaccine safety in North America. Additional studies have since shown that the data presented was fraudulent, and after ten years of controversy and investigation, Dr. Wakefield was discredited, his licence revoked and his research discarded.The damage, however, had been done – vaccination rates in the industrialized world are down to such an extent that it has brought back diseases that have not been seen for decades. The article in the British medical journal The Lancet claimed that the three-in-one measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) was causing inflammatory bowel syndrome and brain damage in children. The five-page paper, which was backed by a press conference, p rovoked substantial media interest. Dr.Wakefield reported on twelve cases of children with what he called â€Å"regressive autism†, who had been admitted to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead (London) between July 1996 and February 1997, all within 14 days of receiving the MMR vaccine. These previously healthy children, the study claimed, suddenly lost basic language and communication skills. Wakefield theorized that the three vaccines, given together, can alter a child’s immune system, allowing the measles virus in the vaccine to infiltrate the intestines; certain proteins, escaping from the intestines, could then reach and harm neurons in the brain. It's a moral issue for me,† he announced at the 1998 press conference, where he advocated breaking up the triple MMR vaccine into single measles, mumps and rubella shots, to be given at yearly intervals. â€Å"I can't support the continued use of these three vaccines, given in combination,† he said, â€Å" until this issue has been resolved. † As the doctor campaigned, vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland dropped sharply. Wakefield supporters even involved Prime Minister Tony Blair by suggesting that his youngest son was not vaccinated with MMR.Although at the time, Mr. Blair refused to discuss the issue for privacy reasons, he did say that, â€Å"For the record, Cherie and I both entirely support the advice, as we have consistently said. It is not true that we believe the MMR vaccine to be dangerous or believe that it is better to have separate injections, or believe that it is linked to autism. On the contrary, the vaccine, which is used throughout the world, helps prevent the spread of diseases that can, if contracted, cause very serious damage to children. It was later confirmed that Leo Blair had been inoculated. In November 2000, Wakefield appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes, linking the â€Å"epidemic of autism† to the MMR vaccine. This set off a spiral of theor ies that all vaccines are suspect: either due to their content, or because children receive too many of them at the same time. The US movement attracted celebrities such as actress Jenny McCarthy, who blamed MMR for her own son’s autism. â€Å"In 1983 the shot schedule was ten. That's when autism was one in 10,000. Now there's 36, and autism is one in 150,† she argued. All arrows point to one direction. † Although the number of children diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically over the last twenty years, it is difficult to say if this is due to improved diagnostic practices or an actual increased prevalence of the disease. Several major studies, however, have ruled out a link with vaccines: †¢The October 2004 edition of Vaccine published a meta review that looked at 120 studies to assess potential side effects of the MMR vaccine. The authors concluded that a connection between MMR and autism is â€Å"unlikely†. A 2005 study compared autism rat es in Japan before and after 1993, when the triple MMR vaccine was broken into three separate vaccines that are administered at different times. It was found that autism is still on the rise. †¢In October 2005, the Cochrance Library published a review of 31 scientific studies, none of which found a link between MMR and either autism or bowel disease. Similarly, a 2007 review of independent studies performed after Wakefield’s publication in the Lancet demonstrated overwhelming evidence against the hypothesis of associating MMR with autism.In addition to the overwhelming scientific evidence contradicting Wakefield’s claims, British journalist Brian Deer discovered that in fact, the research had been funded to create evidence against the MMR vaccine. Wakefield had concealed, misreported and changed information about the children in his study. It turned out that two years before embarking on his â€Å"research†, he had been hired by a lawyer who planned to make big money from several class action lawsuits against companies manufacturing the triple MMR vaccine. â€Å"I have mentioned to you before hat the prime objective is to produce unassailable evidence in court so as to convince a court that these vaccines are dangerous,† the lawyer reminded the doctor in a confidential letter, six months before the Lancet report. The Sunday Times investigation also discovered that in June 1997, Wakefield had filed for a patent on a single measles vaccine – for the success of which he needed to discredit the triple MMR. After the fraud came to light in February 2004, the Lancet retracted the conclusion section of the report (they would eventually retract the whole article in 2010).From July 2007 to May 2010, the General Medical Council conducted the longest ever professional misconduct hearing. Eventually, they revoked Dr. Wakefield’s medical licence, citing medical, scientific and ethical misconduct. So why do parents still believ e in Wakefield’s hypothesis? Probably because anecdotes are more satisfying than scientific methodology, and the media are very good at telling the bad story and very bad at telling the real story. In the UK and Ireland, fueled by sensationalist media coverage, MMR uptake levels between 1998 and 2008 dropped from 92 percent to 73 percent. 5 percent vaccine uptake levels are required for herd immunity (i. e. , the point when diseases cannot spread in a population). In 2008, measles was declared endemic again in the UK. There were a total of 1,348 cases that year, up 36 per cent from the previous year and up a staggering 2,400 per cent from 1998, when there were just 56 cases. In 2006 a 13-year-old boy became the first person to die of measles in Britain since 1992, with a second child dying in 2008. In the United States, the herd immunity is crumbling as states make it easier for parents to opt out of the vaccinations that are usually required to enroll in school.A study publi shed in the journal Pediatrics (2010) by researchers from the University of Michigan showed that 12 percent of parents have refused at least one recommended vaccine for their children. As a result, diseases such as whooping cough and measles are making a comeback. In 2010, 9,500 cases of whooping cough were reported in California, the most in 65 years. Ten patients died, all of them infants too young to be vaccinated. And even though measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, 2011 saw the highest number of measles cases in 15 years. None of these cases resulted in death, but one out of three people had to be hospitalized.This then is Andrew Wakefield’s legacy – an elaborate hoax for financial gain that has set back the medical clock 100 years for millions of children whose parents refuse to accept overwhelming and sound scientific evidence and would rather expose them to the very real dangers of infectious disease. Another casualty, ironically, is autism itself . Significant time, energy and financial resources were wasted that could have been spent on research and developing new treatments. Mr. Wakefield has taken up residence in an affluent suburb of Austin, Texas. Although not allowed to practice medicine, he still lectures to an adoring audience. To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one,† according to J. B. Handley of Generation Rescue. The WHO estimates that 380 people die of measles every day. ? SOURCES: Ahmed, Kamal. â€Å"Blair Baby ‘Has Had' MMR Jab. † The Guardian 23 December 2001. Asaithambi, Rathi. â€Å"Time to Get Tough on Vaccine Refusal. † Baltimore Sun 11 April 2012. Chivers, Tom. â€Å"MMR – Autism Scare: So, Farewell Then, Dr Andrew Wakefield. † The Telegraph 24 May 2010. Deer, Brian. â€Å"MMR: The Truth behind the Crisis. † The Sunday Times 14 November 2004. Deer, Brian. Revealed: MMR Research Scandal. † The Sunday Time s 22 February 2004. DeStefano, F. â€Å"Vaccines and Autism: Evidence Does Not Support a Causal Association. † Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics December 2007: 756-759. Dominus, Susan. â€Å"The Crash and Burn of an Autism Guru. † The New York Times 20 April 2011. Freeper, Berlin. â€Å"The Autism Vaccine Hoax. † The Wall Street Journal 8 January 2011. Mascarelli, Amanda. â€Å"Vaccine Opt-Outs Causing Breaks in ‘Herd Immunity'. † Los Angeles Times 5 August 2011. Sifferlin, Alexandria. â€Å"Measles: 2011 Was the Worst in the U. S. in 15 Years. † Time 19 April 2012.

Consumer Marketing Research Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Consumer Marketing Research Plan - Essay Example Structurally, Reed Elsevier has four divisions that serve a global market for professional information. This allows the company to provide information and services to the professional market as scientists, academics, lawyers, teachers, doctors, nurses and a range of corporate professionals (Elsevier 2006). Skills are valued highly at Reed Elsevier (2006) as part of key strategy to build on core competencies. The company has maintained successful development of technology and delivers through web-based processes. Skills rely heavily on the company's ability to invest in new technology and deliver products effectively and efficiently to the professional information market. Reed Elsevier's staff is broad, including specialists in diverse global information markets as well as recent purchases of medial information publishers and business information researchers. Reed Elsevier places a strong emphasis on their shared values throughout the staff as encouraging innovation, product developme nt, and organic (rather than top-down) management and growth. The company's style is to function as a global organization with a pro-active policy that shares resources, information and cost savings with a group and team-oriented focus on delivering an efficient and viable product. Reed's product is information and information technology. ... Reed Elsevier places a strong emphasis on their shared values throughout the staff as encouraging innovation, product development, and organic (rather than top-down) management and growth. The company's style is to function as a global organization with a pro-active policy that shares resources, information and cost savings with a group and team-oriented focus on delivering an efficient and viable product. Reed's product is information and information technology. This is a strong product line, and Reed Elsevier provides an efficient, easily accessible product through their web-based applications that is not dependent on the customer's physical location, but is globally accessible. Product promotion is strong. Reed Elsevier has a solid web-based presence as well as continuous support from the traditional publishing market (especially as brand recognition for Harcourt division). Furthermore, promotion is done through press releases and professional conferences. Reed is able to promote on multiple levels as web-based, press releases, word of mouth, and brand recognition. Prices at Reed Elsevier are hard to distinguish because there are multiple divisions, information requirements, and professional needs that create variations in prices. Customer and Competition Market Analysis Simba Information shows the market reaching nearly fifty-five billion dollars in the 2002 US market, global information on the professional information sales market was unavailable at the time of this report (Simba 1999). Trends in information purchases, particularly in education, business and medical information markets increase each year (Simba 1999). Customers include Science & Medical, Legal, Education and Business professionals. Customer relationship management is highly

Richter Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Richter - Case Study Example The subsequent change in the political landscape meant that Richter’s market was largely restricted to the countries behind the Iron Curtain and it was only with the breakup of Russia into the newly created CIS states that it has been able to extend its reach to the Western nations and indeed, the rest of the world. Richter has been known for its work in the areas of oral contraception, cerebral oxygenation enhancers and products dealing with schizophrenia. Its success in creating generic drugs as well as APIs for other generic companies has enabled it to expand operations and production, storage and distribution facilities in Poland and Russia. However, the expansion has been putting increasing demands and pressures on the available IT infrastructure, IT support and IT project development teams as well as the direct reports for the affiliate businesses. The company’s CIO, Vince Szucs is faced with bringing up the need for changes in the customary June meeting with seni or management that addresses the IT plan and budget for the year. At the same time, the CIO is concerned that the changes should not result in the cost of IT exceeding 1.5 percent of sales for the company. Of course all decisions for the IT plan and initiatives should be considered in the context of the firms strategy, technological infrastructure and existing business systems such as the SAP R/3 modules already implemented in the company. The IT plans to be presented and initiatives that need to be considered by the CIO and senior management will undoubtedly depend on the value that the company attaches to its present MIS under SAP/R3. Any budgeting process in a large organization like Richter would be a selling and negotiation process for resource allocations from the budget that was created out of sales and profits. In any large organization, departments usually compete for resources on the basis of their performance and established needs. It is up to the CIO

Organizational Learning and Environmental Change Essay

Organizational Learning and Environmental Change - Essay Example Still, most of this is still commandeered by human intelligence however, networked computing is able to reap efficiency and outputs undreamt off earlier.Often new concepts are ignored till the time they translate into a competitive disadvantage. This paper examines the various approaches to learning which an organization can adopt so that learning challenges in the environment are not only recognized right in time but also ingrained into the operations of the organization and reflect in employees’ learning to derive competitive advantage. This paper examines the relevance of the Revans formula which emphasizes the importance of keeping pace in the learning process. All organizations can be viewed as offering some kind of solution to the problems of their stakeholders in the widest and deepest marketing sense. An essential blueprint for the organizational survival is derived from the writing of Revans(1980,1982). Revans(1980) posited that in order for an organization to succeed the learning(L) within an organization must be greater than or equal to the rate of change(C)in the environment (L ≠¥ C). This is called the Raven formula. This concept maintains that organizations must become learning organizations if they are to survive the changes in the external environment that affect the business and its operations. Revans recommended action learning to essentially mean removing the gap between ideas and actions, between thinking and doing, action and learning as parts of each other. Revans coined the phrase,† â€Å"helping each other to help the helpless†.Revans philosophy is based on three concepts of honesty about self, all know ledge ought to be action-oriented and most action should lead to camaraderie. An immediate example can prove Revans theory in relation to stakeholders of any organization. The organization  like airlines –offering the services of air travel-were faced with a new and emerging niche of customers who were upwardly mobile professionals with high spending powers in the  early 1990s.

Behavioural Analysis of Organisations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Behavioural Analysis of Organisations - Essay Example Organisations are grouped into Mechanistic and Organic groups and this grouping is still relevant. In mechanistic organisations, tasks are broken down into specialisms, technicalities, methods, duties, powers related to positions and all behaviours and responses of workers are according to superiors' decisions without much scope for individuality. These organisations are considered to be more stable and vertically oriented. Organic organisations do not have very clearly pronounced hierarchy and instead, depend more on group decisions after interacting with people of diverse background within company framework. These organisations are considered to be more individualistic where people can make a positive contribution and are of democratic nature. While doing a study of this kind, both kinds of organisations are approached. Human behaviour is always diverse and complex and unpredictable at times. A person who is charming to the rest of the world, could be downright aggressive to people working under him. Many times it is not surprising to come across hidden psychological problems that surface only when the person can dictate terms, and dormant otherwise. In recent years, the necessity of a more psychological approach towards business organisations was felt and much study has gone into this direction. Social Scientists are dedicating time to study worker behaviour, management behaviour, and formulate theories of change for the organisations to follow. "Like the relationship between parents and children, the relationship between an organization and its members has aspects of both hate and love. Employees, manager, owners, customers, and society-at-large find themselves both beneficiaties and dependents of the organization an invention that, though man-made, seems to have a lift of its own, Bobbitt et al (1978, p.4). With the globalisation, organisations found it necessary to undergo unprecedented changes, for working with hitherto alien cultures and facing unfamiliar situations. Today solutions and decisions are made by people of diverse background and organisations have to see that all the decisions go in favour of the business. It has become imperative that certain guidelines should be laid down for all workers and managers to follow in spite of the cultural and background differences. Niccolo Machiavelli is considered to be the main political philosopher who spoke of leadership and organisational power. Max Weber followed him in discussing charismatic leadership. Psychology, after Second World War has become the main subject and organisations have created the norms of judging organisational developments from human resources angle. "Whether a manager defaults or whether he succeeds depends on large measure on his understanding of organizational behaviour and all its complexities. Although organizations appear to take on a life of their own, they remain inventions of man," says

Case Study Early Childhood Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Case Study Early Childhood - Essay Example She used pictures of the different fruits she had earlier on asked the children to sample through eating. The pictures also had names of the fruits and hence making it easier for the children to refer to their earlier acquired knowledge of the fruits. Like long term memory, prior knowledge stores information for the later retrieval by the user. The information in prior knowledge is also stored by order of importance just the same as the information stored in the long-term memory. Finally, both the information in the long term memory and that of prior knowledge are stored for a long time hence can be remembered way later (Callander, 2008). She could use the same techniques and then integrate with pictorial display hence maximizing the use of the sensory memory of the children and hence make them remember what they have been taught. For example the same technique of dividing the fruits into different sizes and asking them to count the pieces or practice addition, subtraction, multiplication and division using the fruits hence children can use vivid imagination and sensory memory to remember later on how to use these mathematical methods. Integration employs the use of the same techniques that were successful in one discipline and children will tend to remember more since it will seem more like repetition and imitation (since it is prior knowledge) and the information will also not overload the memory of the children learning new concepts in each discipline (Coon and Mitterer,

Duties and Responsibilities Essay Example for Free

Duties and Responsibilities Essay The main purpose of a master scheduler should be to arrange the staff, students and resources of the school in order to come up with a schedule that optimizes learning in the institution. She/He is tasked to assure that the operation of the institution runs smoothly and efficiently. This paper discusses the duties and responsibilities of a master scheduler, as well as activities that he/she should be implementing. The main duty of a Master Scheduler is to initiate and spearhead the planning, development and maintenance of the Master Schedule. The Master Schedule is expected to support the objectives and the existing curricula of the school. A few signs of a good Master Schedule are as follows: 1) ample time is allotted for the teachers and the students to attain their objectives and expectations, and 2) teachers are able to focus on their area of expertise for more efficiency. This Master Schedule should be finalized and approved before fall of 2009. Since this is the main activity of a Master Scheduler, all 150 hours should be spent on this activity. In the development of a schedule, the Master Scheduler should first do an inspection of the resources of the school. Some of the factors that should be considered when doing the Master Schedule are the approved curriculum, population of the enrollees, availability of teachers, expertise of teachers, number of available classrooms, size of the school cafeteria and number of cafeteria employees and transportation schedules to and from school. These factors will dictate what the schedule should be in order to optimize learning in school given the limited resources. Recording and note-taking should be done. This should be implemented during the first 24 hours on the job or an equivalent of 3 days. Upon receipt of the records of the available teachers, the necessary coordination with the teachers and administrators should be done to come up with an initial Master Schedule. The Master Scheduler can opt to discuss the schedule one-by-one with each teacher, if not too pressured with time. This should take about 40 hours on the job. After an initial Master Schedule has been drafted, this should be discussed with all the teachers and administration staffs. A general meeting of about 4 hours or half a day should be initiated by the Master Scheduler for the purpose of clarifying any conflict, questions and concerns that the teachers and administration staffs should have. Analysis of the final schedule should be done alone by the Master Scheduler. He/She should be able to make sure that the schedule has been optimized given the limited resources of the institution. Problems which are foreseen to happen should be eliminated and alternative plans should be laid out. The analysis should be done in 40 hours or equivalent of 1-week work. After finalization of the Master Schedule, this should be submitted to the school superintendent for approval. Meetings should be set in order to discuss the Master Schedule with the school’s higher management. Questions and concerns should be clarified during this stage. Discussion with higher management should take about 16 hours on the job or an equivalent of 2 days. Prior to the enrollment, a proper monitoring system should be set up in order to examine the workability and feasibility of the Master Schedule. Set-up of the monitoring system should take about 16 hours or 2 days of work. And during enrollment, the monitoring system should be used to observe any problems and deviations from the Master Schedule. If problems and deviations occur, the Master Scheduler should be able to coordinate this with the necessary parties and decide promptly on it. Upon enrollment, the Master Scheduler should spearhead and manage the encoding of the student records, schedules, registration, registration changes and late registration. This stage also involves encoding of the teachers’ schedules. Management of the encoding and monitoring of the Master Schedule should be done during the enrollment period which is about a week or 40-day work.