Just in case you haven’t heard, a UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel found sufficient evidence to suggest “serious professional misconduct” on the part of Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues, who published the very first paper that insinuated a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. Further, The Lancet has retracted the original article. It says so on their home page! Nice!
Fast on the heels of this triumph, was the arrest of James Ray yesterday. This is the “spiritual leader” whose pseudoscience and fake mysticism caused the deaths of 3 of his flock in a sweat lodge in Arizona last October. He has been charged with three counts of manslaughter. He made up a ceremony loosely based on several cultures, none of which he is a part of, took loads of money from his followers, and led them into a hot, dark death trap.
All in all, it has been an excellent two weeks for justice, ethics, and most importantly, the scientific method.
Don’t forget that homeopathy has also gotten a lot of negative attention this week thanks to the 10:23 campaign. New Zealand’s homeopathic organization even admitted that there were no active ingredients in their products.
Man slaughter! James Ray is a straight up murderer. I’m glad he’s been charged, but he should be put behind bars, who knows how he is spinning his charge to his followers. I have no doubt he will be deified by them.