Monday, 16 July 2007
Hippocratic or Hypocrite
No space for flippancy on this one. This is serious. It's not about fundie-bashing, although I promise you will have your chance later JanieBelle. Today sees the start of the trial of Doctor Andrew Wakefield by his medical peers. This is not about whether his claims that the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) jab for children is linked to Autism, as he claims, but is simply about his methodology. He is being challenged about some of the dodgy practices he is alleged to have used. The most bizarre is that he paid children to give blood samples at his son's birthday party. I wonder if the word "ethics" means anything to him? Even if he comes out of this gleaming brighter than Snow White there is still a serious question to be answered. Has he endangered the lives of millions of children worldwide by his potentially flawed research? And as a codicil just for you JanieBelle, he is involved with the Good News Doctor Foundation in Florida, which is would you believe it, a Christian organisation.
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2 comments:
As it happens, Martyne, there seems to be a strong link between denial of one form of science and denial of other forms of science.
Um.. that didn't make much sense, did it? It's nearly 3AM here, I plead incoherence due to fatigue.
I just read a really good blog post the other day on the subject, I'll have to dig up the link for you. It's on one of the blogs in my MonkeySphere.
The long and the short of it is that people who irrationally deny evolution ferinstance often times are the same people who deny global climate change, get mixed up in the Autism/MMR malarky, etc. etc.
And yes, they are almost exclusively fundies.
Kisses
P.S. You have comments turned off on the book meme post. How can we guess if you have the comments turned off, silly?
P.P.S. You haven't made a guess as to my book yet.
Thanks for your comments. It seems to me difficult to comprehend that a doctor who is ostensibly a person of science can also embrace fundieism. In reply to your P.S.'s my blog provider has a default of not allowing comments, which I am sure you are aware of, and I sometimes forget to check the right box. If I post something it is always for everybody to read and everybody to comment on. If you scroll up to the next post you will see I have corrected the problem. The only exception is when I said I would get someone to tell you I was out if you called round to mine and George Clooney was there. But there will always be another time for us to have a girly "get together". I would love to guess at your book but I can find no clues in what you quoted. I simply don't have a scoobies but look forward to hearing the answer.
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