us feel." However, Wakefield's work has been characterized as "an elaborate fraud", and parental fears over vaccines sparked by the controversy, and by continued advocacy of the disproven theory by groups such as Generation Rescue despite, have led, in turn, to decreased immunization rates and an increased incidence of whooping cough and measles, a highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease. Generation Rescue issued a statement that the "media circus" following the revelation of Wakefield's fraud and manipulation of data was "much ado about nothing". Salon responded to Generation Rescue's statement with: Much of Generation Rescue's case is based on publications that do not go through a proper peer review process. Writing for Forbes, Emily Willingham characterized Generation Rescue as "an organization devoted to the debunked notion that vaccines cause autism and that autistic people can be 'recovered' from their autism by way of various unproven and sometimes dangerous interventions, including chelation." See also List of autism-related topics List of vaccine topics References External links Autism-related organizations in the United States Charities based in California Organizations established in 2005 Anti-vaccination in the United States Autism pseudoscience 2005 establishments in California