Did the founder of the antivax movement fake autism-vaccine link?

It is going to take years if not decades to repair the damage this train wreck of a "study" has done in the UK where there is no longer herd immunity to measles and there has already been one death of a child who did not receive the vaccine.

I can only hope that parents refusing to vaccinate their children will finally do so after the absurd Wakefield study is shown for what it is. How frustrating.

Yet, many antivaxers will no doubt refuse to be "distracted by the facts."

Somehow such issues become a "raison-d'etre" for some people and essentially an identity issue (as PG discusses regarding politics & religion in a recent HN post).

It's just a shame when innocent children are deprived of important immunity because of such zealotry by their parents. I can only hope that the light brought on the possible fabrication behind the original antivax data will provide some "immunity" against more parents being infected by the zealotry.

What does Richard Stallman have to do with epidemiology?!