Emotional interviews

Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon:

There are not two sides to every story. Not every issue requires us to legitimize an opposing view. Like, for instance, when the other perspective is totally crackpot. For example, if you’re a disgraced fraud, maybe you’re really not the best source for information about vaccines.

Totally crackpot and harmful as well. The crackpot in question is Andrew Wakefield.

This week the Tribeca Film Festival announced it’s debuting a provocative new documentary with the flamboyant name “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Controversy.” The film’s description promises, “Digging into the long-debated link between autism and vaccines, ‘Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe’ features revealing and emotional interviews with pharmaceutical insiders, doctors, politicians, parents, and one whistleblower to understand what’s behind the skyrocketing increase of autism diagnoses today.” It is directed by Andrew Wakefield. Yeah. That Andrew Wakefield.

The one who’s done more than anyone else to bring back measles.

In 2000, measles had been considered virtually eliminated in the U.S. — and in 2014 there were 644 measles cases spanning 27 states — more than than the previous four years put together. In Orange County the same year, 41 percent of kindergarteners were not vaccinated. Oh and here’s the thing: In 2011, Wakefield’s stunner of a report was fully retracted as “an elaborate fraud.” The British medical journal BMJ’s editor said at the time that “It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors. But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.” Wakefield is now barred from practicing medicine in the UK.

Now that’s a guy who actually merits no-platforming.

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