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Lancet MMR Autism Fraud
The ''Lancet'' MMR autism fraud centered on the publication in February 1998 of a fraudulent research paper titled "Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children" in ''The Lancet''. The paper, authored by now discredited and deregistered Andrew Wakefield, and listing twelve coauthors, falsely claimed non-existent, causative links between the MMR vaccine, colitis, and autism. The fraud was exposed in a lengthy ''Sunday Times'' investigation by reporter Brian Deer, resulting in the paper's retraction in February 2010 and Wakefield being struck off the UK medical register three months later. Wakefield reportedly stood to earn up to $43 million per year selling diagnostic kits for a non-existent syndrome he claimed to have discovered. He also held a patent to a rival vaccine at the time, and he had been employed by a lawyer representing parents in lawsuits against vaccine producers. The scientific consensus on vacci ...
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Andrew Wakefield
Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born September 3, 1956) is a British anti-vaccine activist, former physician, and discredited academic who was struck off the medical register for his involvement in ''The Lancet'' MMR autism fraud, a 1998 study that falsely claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. He has subsequently become known for anti-vaccination activism. Publicity around the 1998 study caused a sharp decline in vaccination uptake, leading to a number of outbreaks of measles around the world. He was a surgeon on the liver transplant programme at the Royal Free Hospital in London and became senior lecturer and honorary consultant in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free and University College School of Medicine. He resigned from his positions there in 2001, "by mutual agreement", then moved to the United States. In 2004, Wakefield co-founded and began working at the Thoughtful House research center (now renamed Johnson Center for ...
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Roy Pounder
Roy Pounder (born 1944) is a British medical doctor and entrepreneur. He was Professor of Medicine at the Royal Free and University College Medical School in London and clinical vice president of the Royal College of Physicians of London. He is now a London University Emeritus Professor of Medicine. Controversially, Pounder hired and mentored disgraced researcher Andrew Wakefield, who in 2010 was struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council, and introduced him to reporters at a notorious press conference at the Royal Free on 26 February 1998. At this event, Pounder helped to launch what became an intractable, international health crisis over the measles, mumps and rubella, MMR vaccine, stating with regard to the three-in-one inoculation: "In hindsight it may be a better solution to give the vaccinations separately." Pounder was later reported in the British Medical Journal as having been allocated stock in a business venture with Wakefield to sell products e ...
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Cherie Blair
Cherie, Lady Blair, (; born 23 September 1954), also known professionally as Cherie Booth, is an English barrister and writer. She is married to the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Sir Tony Blair. Early life and education Booth was born on 23 September 1954 at Fairfield General Hospital, Bury, Lancashire, England, and brought up in Ferndale Road, Waterloo, Merseyside, just north of Liverpool. Although her birth was registered as 'Cherie', owing to her maternal grandmother's influence, she was christened 'Theresa Cara' in deference to the requirement that she be given a saint's name. Her father, British actor Tony Booth, left her mother, actress Gale Howard (née Joyce Smith; 14 February 1933 – 5 June 2016), when Cherie was 8 years old. Cherie and her younger sister Lyndsey were then brought up by Gale and their paternal grandmother Vera Booth, a devout Roman Catholic of Irish descent. The sisters attended Catholic schools in Crosby, Merseyside. Cherie Booth ...
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Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tony Blair's government from 1997 to 2007, and was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1983 to 2015, first for Dunfermline East and later for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. He is the most recent Labour politician as well as the most recent Scottish politician to hold the office of prime minister. A doctoral graduate, Brown studied history at the University of Edinburgh, where he was elected Rector in 1972. He spent his early career working as both a lecturer at a further education college and a television journalist. Brown was elected to the House of Commons in 1983 as the MP for Dunfermline East, later becoming the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in 2005. He joined the Shadow Cabinet in 1989 as Shadow Secretary of State for Trade, and was later ...
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National Health Service
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the "NHS" name ( NHS England, NHS Scotland and NHS Wales). Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland was created separately and is often locally referred to as "the NHS". The four systems were established in 1948 as part of major social reforms following the Second World War. The founding principles were that services should be comprehensive, universal and free at the point of delivery—a health service based on clinical need, not ability to pay. Each service provides a comprehensive range of health services, free at the point of use for people ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom apart from dental treatment and optical care. In England, NHS patients have to pay prescription charges; some, such as those aged over 60 and certain state ...
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HarperCollins Music Entertainment
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987—whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded in 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—together with Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded in 1819), acquired in 1989. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints. History Collins Harper Mergers and acquisitions Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp ...
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Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus
Methicillin-resistant ''Staphylococcus aureus'' (MRSA) is a group of Gram-positive bacteria that are genetically distinct from other strains of '' Staphylococcus aureus''. MRSA is responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans. It caused more than 100,000 deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance in 2019. MRSA is any strain of ''S. aureus'' that has developed (through natural selection) or acquired (through horizontal gene transfer) a multiple drug resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics. Beta-lactam (β-lactam) antibiotics are a broad-spectrum group that include some penams ( penicillin derivatives such as methicillin and oxacillin) and cephems such as the cephalosporins. Strains unable to resist these antibiotics are classified as methicillin-susceptible ''S. aureus'', or MSSA. MRSA is common in hospitals, prisons, and nursing homes, where people with open wounds, invasive devices such as catheters, and weakened immune systems are at greater ris ...
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Genetically Modified Crops
Genetically modified crops (GM crops) are plants used in agriculture, the DNA of which has been modified using genetic engineering methods. Plant genomes can be engineered by physical methods or by use of ''Agrobacterium'' for the delivery of sequences hosted in T-DNA binary vectors. In most cases, the aim is to introduce a new trait to the plant which does not occur naturally in the species. Examples in food crops include resistance to certain pests, diseases, environmental conditions, reduction of spoilage, resistance to chemical treatments (e.g. resistance to a herbicide), or improving the nutrient profile of the crop. Examples in non-food crops include production of pharmaceutical agents, biofuels, and other industrially useful goods, as well as for bioremediation. Farmers have widely adopted GM technology. Acreage increased from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 185.1 million hectares in 2016, some 12% of global cropland. As of 2016, major crop (soybean, maize, canola ...
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Pusztai Affair
The Pusztai affair is a controversy that began in 1998. Protein scientist Árpád Pusztai went public with the initial results of unpublished research he was conducting at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, investigating the possible effects of genetically modified potatoes upon rats. Pusztai claimed that the genetically modified potatoes had stunted growth and repressed the rats' immune systems while thickening their gut mucosa. Initially supported by the Rowett Institute, his comments on a British television programme caused a storm of controversy, and the Rowett Institute withdrew its support. Pusztai was suspended and misconduct procedures were used to seize his data and ban him from speaking publicly. The institute did not renew his annual contract and Pusztai was criticized by the British Royal Society and some other scientists for making an announcement before his experiment was complete or peer-reviewed and for the experiment's design, methodology and analysis ...
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Ben Goldacre
Ben Michael Goldacre (born 20 May 1974) is a British physician, academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford. He is a founder of the AllTrials campaign and OpenTrials to require open science practices in clinical trials. Goldacre is known in particular for his ''Bad Science'' column in ''The Guardian'', which he wrote between 2003 and 2011, and is the author of four books: '' Bad Science'' (2008), a critique of irrationality and certain forms of alternative medicine; ''Bad Pharma'' (2012), an examination of the pharmaceutical industry, its publishing and marketing practices, and its relationship with the medical profession; ''I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That'', a collection of his journalism; and ''Statins'', about evidence-based medicine. Goldacre frequently delivers free talks about bad science; he describes himself ...
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Bad Science (Goldacre Book)
''Bad Science'' is a book by Ben Goldacre, criticising mainstream media reporting on health and science issues. It was published by Fourth Estate in September 2008. It has been positively reviewed by the ''British Medical Journal'' and the ''Daily Telegraph'' and has reached the Top 10 bestseller list for Amazon Books. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize. Bad Science or BadScience is also the title of Goldacre's column in ''The Guardian'' and his website. Contents Each chapter deals with a specific aspect of bad science, often to illustrate a wider point. For example, the chapter on homeopathy becomes the point where he explains the placebo effect, regression to the mean (that is, the natural cycle of the disease), placebo-controlled trials (including the need for randomisation and double blinding), meta-analyses like the Cochrane Collaboration and publication bias. The subjects of each chapter (numbers reflect later editions) are: # The alternative medicine ...
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Health Scare
A health scare can be broadly defined as a social phenomenon whereby the public at large comes to fear some threat to health, based on suppositions which are nearly always not well-founded. In 2009 an ABC News article listed "The Top 10 Health Scares of the Decade": "Some of these threats turned out to be almost nonexistent. Others were arguably overblown. Some caused widespread harm." They listed the following scares: * Swine flu (H1N1) * Bisphenol A (BPA) * Lead paint on toys from China * Trans fats * Bird flu (H5N1) * Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) * Methicillin-resistant ''Staphylococcus aureus'' (MRSA) * Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) * Anthrax * Cell phones. See also * List of health scares * Health crisis * Aspartame controversy * Dental amalgam controversy * Thiomersal and vaccines * Water fluoridation controversy * COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory synd ...
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