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don't hold your breath. ex-doctor the OG antivax Wakefield committed malpractice by not getting informed consent to do all kinds of tests on autistic children,
by pas 5y ago
don't hold your breath. ex-doctor the OG antivax Wakefield committed malpractice by not getting informed consent to do all kinds of tests on autistic children, and he's free as ever. :/
- ben_w 5y agoAye, and that sucks, but (1) he did his thing before the Data Protection Act 1998 let alone GDPR, and (2) violations of medical consent are different from and (IMO as a generalisation) much more serious than violations of data processing consent. Not sure what laws he might have violated, though I think he would be breaking one if he calls himself “doctor” at this point?
- pas 5y agoHe conducted research for money. This involved ~7 children spending 1 week in a hospital. The children were young (mean age 6) and some had severe autism, so they had to be sedated, held down by adults, etc. His "informed consent" form does not describe the risks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc&t=1h7m17s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc&t=1h7m17s (Where was the IRB during all this? Good question.)
- ben_w 5y agoI was already in agreement that he sucks, but that doesn’t actually tell me he committed an offence under section Foo of the Perfectly Sensible Yet Obscure Medical Consent Act 1869 or whatever, so I don’t know if legally speaking he ought to have been locked up.