In 1998 the distinguished medical journal Lancet reported that a team of scientists found a positive correlation between childhood vaccinations and autism.

The alleged culprit in the disaster was thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in bottles of vaccine that might be opened, used partially, and then stored.

Because of Lancet's rock-solid reputation, this finding set off a wave of terror among parents of young children. Parents began refusing to have their children protected against what used to be common - and potentially deadly - diseases. The panic began in 1998 and persists today.

Fast-forward to 2004. Of the 13 scientists involved in the original study:

• 10 retracted the parts of the study about the positive correlation between childhood vaccinations and autism
• 2 Two did not voice an opinion
• 1 scientist, the leader of the research team, defended the study and the conclusions drawn from the data gathered.
  

The lead author didn't bother to tell his co-researchers AND Lancet that he was on the take: lawyers representing the parents of autistic children paid him $800,000 to determine whether there were grounds for pursuing legal action. He delivered the results to the lawyers before publishing it in that major medical journal.

When the ten scientists (and Lancet) learned that part of the story, they were not amused. The term "conflict of interest" kept coming up. The $800,000 richer 'scientist' insists that

• His participation and leadership was not influenced by the money
• He was objective and dispassionate in his work
• He was off the hook, anyway: "... we emphasise that this was not a scientific paper but a clinical report."
  

He also did not look for the converse: was there data that showed the lack of a positive correlation (between vaccines and autism)? His fellow scientists and Lancet apparently missed, in 1998, those nuances.

Also, no one noticed that vaccines are administered when the children are the same age as when autism is typically diagnosed¹.

Follow up:

• There have been five major studies that found no causal relationship between autism and thimerosal
• The use of thimerosal in vaccines was discontinued in 2001. If thimerosal were truly a problem, there would have been a drop in the rate of autism among vaccinated children. There was no such decrease.
  

And yet, the anti-vaccination hysteria continues. There was a lot of noise about this year's flu vaccines being

• loaded with brain-damaging mercury
  
• likely to cause autism
• a government plot (read: Obama's plot) to get people's medical records.
  

¹ I am reminded of a physician who had written a somewhat popular book. In that book he linked ice cream and polio. After all, people 'caught' polio in the summer, and people ate ice cream in the summer.

In a similar vein, I knew a fellow who (as a child) in a short time frame: ate peanut butter, got sick, and was diagnosed with, um... polio. He died in his adult years from a brain tumor. That damned peanut butter - it's a plot by Skippy to get our medical records. To this day Skippy refuses to list polio-causing agents and carcinogens as ingredients in their product - creamy or smooth.