The Evidence Mounts: The Role of Bacteria and Viruses in Autism
Wakefield's fraud wasn't in suggesting that the gut had something to do with autism; that's just hypothesis formation - and in his case, maybe a good one. No, what got him in trouble was suggesting that he had confirmation/verification (that empiricism business we've been writing about) of the cause advocated by his plaintiff lawyer backers. Too bad. The cause may not be vaccines but there's growing evidence that disruption of the microbes with whom we share this life may in fact be at the heart of the matter. For more see:
"State of the Art: Microbiology in Health and Disease. Intestinal Bacterial Flora in Autism" ; then see; Desulfovibrio Species are Potentially Important in Regressive Autism" followed by "Gastrointestinal Flora and Gastrointestinal Status in Children with Autism -- Comparisons to Typical Children and Correlation with Autism Severity" and then finish it off with "Secrets of the MMR Scare. How the Vaccine Crisis Was Meant to Make Money".
Sadly, rather than working to uncover the cause of human suffering we seemingly spend most of our energy trying to determine to whom we ought to assign blame - first for the illness and then for the false claims of causality. For whatever reason we seem, collectively, more interested in rooting out any possible nefarious human agency rather than in solving, engineer-style, the problem at hand. So, perhaps, back to one of our first posts - "It Takes a Villain". If someone can somehow be blamed for the naughtiness of microbes perhaps we can makes some rapid progress on these matters. Pity the victims but after all every Dark Age, even the mini-version through which we're passing, demands its witches.
