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Children getting their blood drawn at a birthday party? Did the invite remind kids to wear short sleeves and skip breakfast? Has this become an accepted party game along side the bouncy castles and treasure hunts?
It is if you're Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the by now discredited charlatan "researcher" who authored the just retracted 1998 Lancet study responsible for the vaccines-cause-autism scare. The autism quack actually trolled for subjects at his son's birthday party. A factoid almost too incredible to believe brought to us by MSNBC (Medical Journal Retracts Flawed Autism Study):
For the study, Wakefield took blood samples from children at his son's birthday party, paying them 5 pounds each ($8) for their contributions and later joking about the incident.
Let's leave aside the blood donors' parents and the disturbing issue of whether they were present and agreed or weren't present and would never have agreed to such an invasion of their children's privacy not to mention an effrontery to science and I'm quite sure, Miss Manners.
If only the lack of ethics (and of course, science) ended with the blood draws. It got much, much worse...
