Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure -- by Paul A. Offit. Columbia University Press: 2008. 328 pp. $24.95, £14.95. Paul Offit's distinguished academic credentials and long-standing advocacy for vaccines in the United States provide the weight behind this forceful book. Autism's False Prophets focuses on the people and events in that country that were central to the claimed link between vaccination and autism. Written with passion, authority, bluntness and literary skill, it largely lives up to the back cover's promise of a 'page-turner'. The text is rich in heroes and villains. The villains include litigious parents, publicity-seeking journalists, politicians, lawyers and environmental activists, lobbyists and expert witnesses. An assortment of quacks, zealots and incompetents, frequently from within the medical or allied professions, complete the roll-call of 'false prophets'. No wonder the public struggles to use good science as the sole arbiter for rational behaviour.

At the heart of the autism debate is a possible link between the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism. The debate is not founded by medical or scientific research.

A U.S. government agency has dropped plans for a study of a controversial treatment for autism that critics had called an unethical experiment on children. The National Institute of Mental Health said in a statement Wednesday that the study of the treatment — called chelation — has been abandoned. The agency decided the money would be better used testing other potential therapies for autism and related disorders, the statement said.