TakeSake:

Here we have a similar situation again. An industry that vigorously defends the product. A government that supports the use through vaccine requirements. A scientific community that proclaims the product to be safe. An atmosphere that makes those who disagree with the industrial / governmental / medical / scientific complex to be labeled as hysterical, illogical, immoral, or even pathological.

I really don't know how you can compare those other issues with the vaccines-cause-autism claims.

The medical community was quite clear in raising concerns about smoking years before the first Surgeon General's report in the 1960s. To pretend that the entire medical and scientific community was in cahoots with the government and the cigarette makers in downplaying the risks of smoking or even exposure to second-hand smoke is flat nonsense.

Quite a few reputable physicians and researchers were concerned about the risks of the COX-2 inhibitors such as Vioxx, and these issues were raised soon after the release of the product onto the market. It was clear to anyone who took a hard look at the drug company claims that they were overstating the benefits and understating the risks of COX-2s. I was always very reluctant to use these drugs, and I stopped prescribing them, especially Vioxx, in patients with significant cardiac risk factors for a full 2 years before the drug was pulled off the market. I admit I was in the minority, but I was NOT alone in my reluctance as a Family Physician to prescribe those drugs.

In both these cases, there were clear warning signs and valid data that were pointed out by reputable scientists and physicians raising responsible concerns well before you read about the issue in the local paper. You are fooling yourself if you think that one big study changed everyone's mind overnight about second-hand smoke or Vioxx. There really is no comparable scientific base to the claims that vaccines cause autism.

You seem to see the medical community, the research community, the government regulatory bodies, and industry as this big monolithic collection of individuals who share the same agenda and talking points. Sorry, but the world is a bit more complex than that.

I have noticed a tendency to lump all the critics of the vaccines-cause-autism claims in with "Big Pharma" and other bogeymen. Heck, in one thread, someone linked those critics in with Dick Cheney as well! This is little more than a cute debater's trick, and does not reflect the true lay of the land in the medical world.

Medical science is always changing. What we think we think we know today may not be what we are sure about tomorrow. But using that fact as a justification for beating a dead horse in the hope it will suddenly get up and walk again is not very sensible.