The media and famous named Leftists just love a good conspiracy theory.

Correcting our record

We've removed an explosive 2005 report by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about autism and vaccines. Here's why

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a far Leftist with odd ideas about everything.

There isn't enough science in the world to debunk anti-vaccine quackery for some people

No matter how conclusively science proves them wrong, there are those who persist in propagating the dangerous quackery of a link between childhood vaccinations and autism.

Celebrity mom Jenny McCarthy is among the die-hards. She has a young autistic son, has long believed vaccinations triggered his condition and last week dismissed the latest scientific debunking as merely "one journalist's accusations."

All sympathy to her, McCarthy is wrong. Worse, she and like-minded advocates are harmful. They compound damage that was done to public health by the fraudulent, half-baked study that fomented vaccination hysteria.

In 1998, the British medical journal Lancet published a study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that purported to find a connection between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism.

The study was based on 12 children, and, in time, the vast majority of Wakefield's co-authors disavowed the findings. A British medical group did an in-depth investigation and concluded Wakefield was guilty of dishonesty and misconduct. The Lancet retracted his article. And now, the British Medical Journal has concluded that Wakefield had committed an "elaborate fraud."

The fallout from Wakefield's assertions has been severe. Many parents grew skittish about vaccinations, leading to a resurgence of measles in England and Wales.

And reports about Wakefield's findings contributed to unfounded suspicions about vaccinations in general.

As Dr. Art Kellermann and Katherine Harris of the RAND Corp. noted in a Daily News Op-Ed last week, only a quarter of New Yorkers were vaccinated against the flu last fall, compared with a third of the people nationwide.

"The low participation rate could cost lives," Kellermann and Harris wrote. "People - often motivated by fears and myths - may need some facts to help persuade them to get some shots."

Here is one: The claim that vaccinations cause autism has been completely, totally debunked.