R The Obama administration has granted whistleblower immunity to a federal government scientist that claimed he intentionally omitted information in a study that could have shown a race-based link between vaccines and childhood diseases including autism
This bit of news is coming at a very interesting time in public health and American politics. The recent measles outbreak has increased an already intense dialogue between pro and anti vaccine groups.. While countless studies conclude that vaccines are safe and don’t have a direct effect leading to autism, others still insist that there has been a overreaching attempting by big drug companies to hide any evidence of vaccine injury cases.
We first detailed the matter of William Thompson five months ago. Then, we attempted to weed through the convoluted and confusing story of his allegations. At that time, mainstream media sources covered Thompson’s accusations but didn’t give them much merit. The Atlanta study at the center of this controversy supposedly showed a link between African American boys and the appearance of autism after the MMR vaccine was administered.. But Thompson alleged CDC attempts to hide that data and fudge numbers to showcase no link between them..
Thompson, since then, has nto ended his fight.. Even more, as we see today with this grant of immunity as a whistleblower, the next phase may give the still-employed-at-the-CDC Thompson a much larger venue to state his case..
Patrick Howley of the DAILY CALLER writes this,
In 2004, Dr. William S. Thompson worked on a report for the CDC’s National Immunization Program. That report, which ran in the “Pediatrics” medical journal, came to the conclusion that there’s no link between vaccines and autism and that no racial group is more likely to be damaged by vaccines.
But Thompson said that he and other CDC scientists intentionally fudged the results, manipulating the pool of children they analyzed and limiting the proper number of African-American children from participating. The authors limited black children from showing up in the results by excluding babies without a state of Georgia birth certificate.
“It was a mutual decision among the five co-authors,” Dr. Brian Hooker told The Daily Caller. An associate professor at California’s Simpson University, Hooker found out about the deception by secretly taping conversations that he had with Thompson last year. After beginning to talk to Thompson in 2013, he ended up getting Thompson’s information on audio record and disseminated the information in the vaccine-skeptic online community.
“I live close to the Oregon border. I taped the conversations in a hotel room,” Hooker said.
“I didn’t want people to run out and delay vaccination because of this, because it was only one piece of data. But it was the one piece of data that CDC chose to cover up,” Hooker said.
In August 2014 this entire issue reared its head after Rob Schneider–yes the actor–publicly stated that he had evidence showing vaccine fraud.
And since then, the debate has only gotten much more intense–often repugnant with illogical fallacies presented and truly mean and nasty insults hurled.. And now, enter the possibility of Thompson testifying? I think things are only going to get more intense.
