Kathleen Seidel of Peterborough has long drawn attention (from me and many others) for her excellent  blog www.neurodiversity.com about the false link between autism and vaccines - she was sued by a lawyer for the true believers, but fought back and won. Now she is featured in a new book by pediatrician Paul Offit detailing what he sees as conflicts of interest among the anti-vaccine crowd, who have built an industry around the despair of parents of autistic children, partly by suing drug makers, and don’t want to see that industry disappear. This is a topic that Seidel often covers after doing tons of homework, finding and correlating legal documents with a vigor that would do a law clerk proud. She does “citizen journalism” the way it should be done.

Another person who agrees with them, by the way, is Phil Plait of “Bad Astronomy” fame - here’s his latest post written with his usual lack of restraint, celebrating the decision by NIH to stop studying the fringe hypothesis that chelation (ridding the body of certain toxins) fights autism.

As a journalist, I’m very objective on this topic. Objectively, studies have demonstrated that there is no link between autism and vaccines, so continuing to waste time on the belief is harmful to patients, misleading to their families, and a waste of medical time and money that should be better spent elsewhere. Reporting anything else would be biased.

Tags: autism, vaccines