- Details all of the players in the vaccine debate
- Easy to read, even for people without a medical background
- Provides a history of autism 'cures' that don't work
- Gives the viewpoint of parents of children with autism who do not think that vaccines were to blame
- A timeline and appendix with biographies would have made it easier to put everything together
- Learn about the conflicts behind the people who are against vaccines
- Describes facilitated communication, secretin, and other treatments once touted as cures for autism
- Review the scientific debate on the safety of vaccines
- Watch a case unfold in vaccine court
Autism isn't a new condition. Linking it to vaccines or vaccine additives is a fairly new phenomena though. Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure by Paul A. Offit, M.D., provides an in-depth analysis of how vaccines and vaccine additives came to be blamed for the current rise in autism.
From Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his research that falsely linked the MMR vaccine to autism to the idea that autism is caused by mercury poisoning from thimerosal in vaccines, you will learn everything you want to know about the vaccine debate, such as:
- Richard Barr - the lawyer who paid Andrew Wakefield and others to conduct research to prove that vaccines cause autism
- Mark and David Geier - believe thimerosal causes autism and also treated autistic children with Lupron
- Simpsonwood - a meeting of health professionals where the safety of thimerosal was reviewed
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. - wrote an article for Rolling Stone about Simpsonwood and thimerosal called 'Deadly Immunity'
- David Kirby - wrote a book about thimerosal and continues to blame mercury as a cause for autism
- Dan Burton - a Congressman who has a grandson with autism and who often hosts groups touting autism cures
- Unigenetics - an unaccredited company that did many of the tests for Andrew Wakefield
- Nicolas Chadwick - the research assistant who worked in Andrew Wakefield's lab and who reported that he did not find measles virus in any of his tests, in contrast to what Dr. Wakefield reported
Most importantly, Autism's False Prophets provides an overview of the scientific method and the scientific debate, which concludes that 'ten epidemiological studies have show MMR vaccines doesn't cause autism' and 'six have shown thimerosal doesn't cause autism.'
