The British Medical Journal has the first (fantastic) article in a planned series on the now retracted Lancet journal article first drawing the (now demonstrated to be fraudulent) connection between the Measles-Mumps-and-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. It’s a crackling must-read.
Wakefield was working on a lawsuit,7 for which he sought a bowel-brain “syndrome” as its centrepiece. Claiming an undisclosed £150 (€180, $230) an hour through a Norfolk solicitor named Richard Barr, he had been confidentially 8 put on the payroll two years before the paper was published, eventually grossing him £435 643, plus expenses.
Curiously, however, Wakefield had already identified such a syndrome before the project which would reputedly discover it. “Children with enteritis/disintegrative disorder [an expression he used for bowel inflammation and regressive autism] form part of a new syndrome,” he and Barr explained in a confidential grant application to the UK government’s Legal Aid Board before any of the children were investigated. “Nonetheless the evidence is undeniably in favour of a specific vaccine induced pathology.”
The two men also aimed to show a sudden-onset “temporal association”—strong evidence in product liability. “Dr Wakefield feels that if we can show a clear time link between the vaccination and onset of symptoms,” Barr told the legal board, “we should be able to dispose of the suggestion that it’s simply a chance encounter.”
What follows is a detailed break down of how Dr. Wakefield carefully manufactured these temporal associations, in order to bolster the bogus lawsuits he and others were planning to profit from. You must read this article. At the end is a TL;DR summary of the fraud at the center of the MMR -> Autism bullshit that continues today:
The Lancet paper was a case series of 12 child patients; it reported a proposed “new syndrome” of enterocolitis and regressive autism and associated this with MMR as an “apparent precipitating event.” But in fact:
* Three of nine children reported with regressive autism did not have autism diagnosed at all. Only one child clearly had regressive autism
* Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were “previously normal,” five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns
* Some children were reported to have experienced first behavioural symptoms within days of MMR, but the records documented these as starting some months after vaccination
* In nine cases, unremarkable colonic histopathology results—noting no or minimal fluctuations in inflammatory cell populations—were changed after a medical school “research review” to “non-specific colitis”
* The parents of eight children were reported as blaming MMR, but 11 families made this allegation at the hospital. The exclusion of three allegations—all giving times to onset of problems in months—helped to create the appearance of a 14 day temporal link
* Patients were recruited through anti-MMR campaigners, and the study was commissioned and funded for planned litigation
This fraud is infuriating on so many levels, none more central to me than the enormous waste of pediatric research dollars and subjects. There is a grave paucity of data available on a wide spectrum of medications now commonly used on children: antibiotics, anti-seizure, anti-nausea, antidepressants, anti-psychotics, pain medications, sedatives, appetite stimulants and on and on and on. Running a clinical trial on children is even more expensive and more difficult than on adults. Huge sums of money were wasted trying to reproduce the fraudulent connection between MMR vaccination and autism. Hundreds of children were recruited and run through clinical trials—having their health endangered for this fraud. All of this risk and money could’ve gone to testing all of these other medications we don’t know about—medicines we use on children, and legitimately cannot prove are safe. You should be furious.
Updated: Anthony beat me to it. Consider my take from the perspective of a scientist and physician.
Millions of kids will end up dead because of this.
Certain diseases have actually resurfaced that we thought were gone, too.
Aided, sadly, by Saudi Arabia, which acted as a vector.
@50 – I defer, as I cannot locate that paper! It really stuck out in my mind – as it is the only one i could remember ever seeing that mentioned mercury (just want to once again mention not in relation to vaccines though)… Anyway, one paper is nothing compared to all of the info out there so it is likely not too relevant in the scheme of things.
[also i think i wrote neural firing previously but meant dendritic growth – something like that]
Mercury is definitely a really bad thing, a potent neurotoxin, to get all scientific on you. It’s released into the atmosphere by coal-fired power plants, among other sources, and so it can be ingested both directly from the air as well as from seafood (mercury ends up in the water and bio-accumulates up the food chain with large amounts ending up in predators such as sharks and swordfish).
BUT, mercury, which was already present in only very low levels, has been basically eliminated from vaccines. This was done a number of years ago as a safety measure and to placate the crazies. Yet they continue to scream bloody murder about vaccines. This news will do nothing to stop them. They will continue to claim that mothers know more about their children than doctors.
Where are our Real Life Super Heroes when we really need them?
The waste of research time and money is infuriating, yes, but it is not at all the most infuriating thing. The most infuriating thing is that children died of measles because their parents, or the parents of a kid they came in contact with, bought into this crap. This Wakefield guy murdered children for money. I hope the inevitable lawsuits – from the parents of children who died or were harmed by non-vaccination, and from the vaccine manufacturers who were unjustly defamed – strip him of every penny he’s got. If he dies homeless, penniless and alone, it’ll be justice.
13. Several of you missed #13’s actual point.
Whether or not Wakefield is a scumbag (and I say he is), this exposes one of the great problems in modern research, which is that the media will run with a hastily-drawn conclusion to a research study and proclaim it as proven fact… without eyeballing it and asking pertinent questions about the validity. And it ripples throughout society well before anyone makes a concerted, skeptical effort to quality-check, double check and triple check the findings.
Andrew Wakefield is absolutely guilty of a hideous, damaging case of fraud. And the media, through negligent jump-to-conclusions journalism, inadvertently helped him out in his cause. To make sure something like this never happens again, we not only need to be more diligent about vetting our nation’s researchers, but be more diligent about how we process the information our media gives us… and not just blindly accept the information they give us as fact.
@40 No, you’ve got my tone right. A sample of 12 when there are millions of children getting vaccinated and certainly thousands of children around with autism to examine and trace? The huge real world experiment in Califorina where mercury was elimnated from vaccines before the rest of the country and autism rates didn’t change? Plus, I think there was some large change in vaccination rates in one of the former Soviet block countries with the collapse of their state run medical establishment with no corresponding change in the rate of autism diagonis. Its been obvious for years that there was nothing to this study. Wakefield’s financial benefit has been known for years as well. It came out in 1999 that he paid children at his child’s birthday party for blood samples as part of this study.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/s…
Nobody has had any excuse for believing this nonsense for years.
@56 – Absolutely right. I have privately been bemoaning the situation especially lately. Our ‘media’ has really become almost ‘twitters’ with the same deficit of veracity…
@57 – Good point(s).
35
As the mother of an autistc child I will take autism over measles, mumps, tetnus, diptheria etc.. anyday. But I understand that it is really difficult to accept that your child has a condition that will make their life difficult and parenting difficult and is financially and emotionally draining and there is no explaination why. It is much much easier to have something to blame like the MMR.
Also I would like to point out that autiam is not a death sentence! It’s a struggle but many autistic kids can, with help, learn to lead happy, fufilling lives.
And I really wish someone would stick a mike in the face of some parent whose kid developed a preventable disease and ask them is they still think they made the right choce for their family and what they advise new parents to do with their babies.
35
As the mother of an autistc child I will take autism over measles, mumps, tetnus, diptheria etc.. anyday. But I understand that it is really difficult to accept that your child has a condition that will make their life difficult and parenting difficult and is financially and emotionally draining and there is no explaination why. It is much much easier to have something to blame like the MMR.
Also I would like to point out that autiam is not a death sentence! It’s a struggle but many autistic kids can, with help, learn to lead happy, fufilling lives.
And I really wish someone would stick a mike in the face of some parent whose kid developed a preventable disease and ask them is they still think they made the right choce for their family and what they advise new parents to do with their babies.
Re mercury, everyone who had dental work for the last 50 years had mercury placed in their mouths, sometimes beginning at age 3 (when my teeth were first worked on). As a parent of an autistic adult, I’ve known autistic children and adults for years, some of whom had dental work and some who didn’t. Some of their unaffected siblings had mercury fillings; some didn’t. From direct observation, I doubt if there’s any correlation. And so far, absolutely no theory regarding the etiology of autism has been proven.
Any parent who had an autistic kid over the age of 25 could have read that “study” and known it was BS, and we did know it was BS. The twits (and yes, they are definitely twits) who are pledged to the mercury theology needed to have a conspiracy theory to explain why they, as obviously perfect human beings, could actually have given birth to children who are not considered perfect. Their kids are pretty young and the parents are still in denial, and they’ve got support in that denial: parents’ blogs. That denial will continue, supported by new conspiracy theories, wasting time, money, and driving their kids–autistic and non-autistic–nuts.
@61: Well, mercury in dental fillings is amalgamated with other metals, so it’s way harder for it to get into your system.
(To Stranger and all hateful commentators,
If bullying, hatred/hysteria, intimidation and ridicule are all you have for an argument, then you must not have much of an argument. You all have ALOT more in common with the anti-gay movement than you realize! and Fuck ALL you hypocrites!! -k)
Wow what an incredible hate campaign the Stranger has going on against the vaccine safety movement! Complete with personal attacks and straw man arguments…too bad for the anti-gay movement that you guys aren’t also anti-gay, with all the hate you whip up from your readers…
…the pharmeceutical Industry must be in LOVE the Stranger!
The vaccine-issues MOST IGNORED by the Stranger (Why?):
1- First off the British Medical Journal is owned by Merck (Merck sells vaccines!) -does anyone see an ethics violation here? a conflict of interest? No? Then fuck you hypocrites!
2- Wakefield never said “cause,” BUT because a Murdoch owned publication comes out saying Wakefield said vaccines “cause” autism, it is repeated over and over until everyone believes it. Wakefield’s actual words were that there was a “possible cause,” and adding that it “needed further investigation.” -not unethical nor criminal, but since a billion-dollar industry does NOT want ANY investigation of a link (or especially a call for further investigation into a possible link between autism and vaccines) anyone caught doing so is going get what Wakefield got.
And what about the ethics violations of Dr. Offit, profitting off vaccines he created. You don’t think he has a vested interest in “studies prove no link between autism and vaccines containing mercury”? And how many of those “studies” are funded by industry? Why no investigation into that?!
3- The pharmeceutical industry is predicting $35 billion dollars profits in vaccine sales just for 2012! -oh, and they care more about product safety than profits? Then why is there a law (NCVI Act of 1986) that says all vaccine manufacturers are not liable for any injury, including death, resulting from their products that are “unavoidably unsafe” -as the law specifically describes them.
And the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed this law last 22 Feb 2011 (Brueswitz v. Wyeth No. 09-152)
Can anyone explain that language “unavoidably unsafe” used by that law to describe vaccines?
4- If autism is really just a genetic disease, why was it never reported in any medical analogues, all throughout human history, until a Dr. Kanner first comes across its symptoms in 1938? And even in the early 1980’s autism cases were really rare. It was not until after the NCVI Act of 1986, in the late 1980’s, that autism has been on the increase and has been ever since: recent autism rates from the CDC, released in 2009, show that in between 2004 and 2006, average autism rates had risen 57% (97% in some areas and 20% in others -averaging out to a 57% overall increase).
With no evidence whatsoever, the claim can be made that, ‘Autism has always been with us we just never noticed it before’? Really!!? Have you ever seen how difficult (and time-consuming!!) and expensive it is to take care of an autistic person? Of all the diseases that vaccines protect children from, none are nearly as debilitating as autism. Just try watching this 6-min youtube submitted by parents trying to care for their autistic child ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu7C5clA4… ) and try saying autism has always been with us, it was just never noticed before! GET FUCKING REAL!!!
5- And what about the CDC and the FDA? Give me a goddamm break!!! They are the most corrupt goddamned government institutions America has ever seen!!!!! So many conflict-of- interest caes, where CDC and FDA administration officials end up working for the pharmeceutical industry -you could run an investigative tv series on every conflict-of-interest incident involving administrative officials and never run out of stories! The last director of the CDC now works for Merck…Investigate THAT, you Stranger cunts!
6- Mercury has a documented history of causing harm to the human brain -the ancient Romans sent their lowest people into the mercury mines; syphillus was treated by mercury until peicillin was invented but only the wealthy could afford the mercury treatment -so the high correlation of neurological brain problems associated with syphillus does not exist at all with the poorer populations (black and indian), and disappears altogether when penicillin is invented…etc.
So why is it too much to ask that mercury be removed from all pharmecuetical procucts?
Why all this hatred for the vaccine-safety groups like Safe Minds, Age of Autism, Elizabeth Birt, and nvic.org when all they are asking for is vaccine safety? Why is the vaccine-safety movement still being accused of being anti-vaccine when they are not anti-vaccine? Do we accuse people of being anti-car when all they want is safer cars? No, hopefully we don’t. So why the blanket hatred for those who only want vaccines to be safe?
(If you’re tired of only hearing from pharmeceutical propaganda and their paid “scientists,” I suggest http://www.safeminds.org ; http://www.ageofautism.com ; http://www.ebcala.org ; and http://www.nvic.org)
Otherwise, fuck off!