Our winner is Dr. Anderew Wakefield. He is the doctor, almost single handedly responsible for the paranoia in some parents, worldwide, for a decade now about letting their kids get the MMR vaccination - measles, mumps & rubella.
His research, published in February 1998 in the British medical journal the Lancet suggested that the MMR triple vaccine was a likely cause of autism via some new kind of inflammitory bowel disease that the vaccinations induced with symptonms appearing within days.
He apparently made it up.
The Times of London has obtained the actual hospital medical records of the vaccinated kids on which Wakefield based his conclusions.
There were only 12 kids in the study, and their ailments as described in the article were different than the ones in their hospital records.
Worse still, Wakefield left out the fact that in several of the 12 cases there had been concerns before the vaccinations that the kids were not healthy enough to be vaccinated. And the hospital records show nearly all of the kids had no bowel troubles at all, while Wakefield's article said they all did.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who may have put millions of kids at unnecessary risk for measles, mumps, rubella and who knows what else...?
Today's worst person in the world.
Also, the Lancet is accusing Wakefield of failing to disclose a conflict of interest involving the selection of the participants in his study and a possible financial benefit they or Wakefield could have received as the result of separate litigation involving autism.
This will not end the vaccination debate by a long shot - but when you think of the fear, misery and death visited upon families because some people were too afraid to vaccinate their kids - you hope this guy will have to answer for pitching bad science and calling it truth.
Somebody out to beat his ass.
Late edit: for those interested in a fuller version of Wakefield's sorry story - E passed along this article by Brian Deer
The MMR-autism crisis - our story so far
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