Doctor Andrew Wakefield, Who Pushed Link Between Vaccine, Autism Falsified Data: Report

Times Of London:

THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Read the whole story: Times Of London

Comments

[bdi]

The Wakefield GMC hearing will probably grind on until August 2009. Why does Wakefield feel the need to have propaganda websites flying false colours. One, CryShame, that purports to be run by parents but which is controlled by Wakefield protege Carol Stott. The other, Child Health Safety, run by Wakefield lawyer Clifford Miller?

[bdi]

The US court judgments on Cedillo, Hazlehurst and Snyder remove any remaining credibility Wakefield may have had. His own staff testified that it was known that no measles virus had been found. So the millions that were subsequently spent were sheer waste. But let's remember that most of those those millions went into lawyers' pockets. Wakefield was merely a convenient tool for crooked lawyers.
If Wakefield claims not to be a fraud let him publish his 1999 Interim Report that was used by the law firm Hodge Jones & Allen to extract millions of pounds from the Legal Aid Board. What a coincidence - Hodge Jones and Allen was also given the contracts for Organophosphates and Gulf War without tendering for any. How strange. And all three contracts were run up blind alleys to the advantage of the UK Government, which had issued the contracts without inviting tenders.

[MNmommy]

Good for Keith Olbermann!!!

Andrew Wakefield, tonights Worst Person in the World!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[calamityjohn]

It will be interesting to see how things play out now that the pharmas finally figured out to even out their political donations at more than $13,000,000 for each party this year ..
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=H04

[TwentyCharactersLong]

Well, since the pharmas aren't even the biggest creators of the actual vaccines(no money in them)...

[isjois]

Why is it ok to force medical procedures upon people who don't want them?

If you are for "forced vaccinations" - where do you think policies like this will end? Today, it's "mandatory vaccines". Tomorrow, mandatory psych meds for everyone whom any doctor considers to be "different", sterilizations of those deemed "unfit" to reproduce, required removal of limbs/organs for cancer patients to be "cost effective". Really. Where do we start and stop with mandatory medical procedures?

If you want to vaccinate yourself and your children, then do so. Don't force others. Please don't bring up "herd immunity". Discussing "herd immunity" suggests that you favor "social responsibility" over "personal responsibility". I doubt this is the case. If I'm wrong - what are you doing to gain universal health care for all, improve our educational programs and enhance our entitlement programs? All of these would give families with disabled members an opportunity to live a "full" life...including those harmed by vaccinations.

When people are permanently disabled by their vaccinations, our society doesn't want to "pay" for their lifetime costs. I know from experience. My children and I all had adverse reactions. Now, we don't use them. But, had there been TRUE informed consent OR screening prior to vaccination, I may have seen a pattern of adverse reactions in my family history and avoided them with my children. We wouldn't be living in financial and medical ruin.

[MNmommy]

I believe almost every state allows for vaccine exemptions - no one is being forced. Social responsibility and public health are important aspects of our culture. If and when it can be proven that the number of *permanently disabled* folks outstrip the need for herd immunity you might have a case. I wonder how the mother of the unvaccinated baby that died in MN of Hib meningitis feels about this subject?

I've been working diligently for single payer health care for years, as well as being an active advocate for the mentally disabled and volunteering hundreds of hours per year at my kids' schools.

There are all kinds of problems with the social contract with mentally disabled folks, and disabled folks in general - there is a huge backlog of disabled folks trying to get SDI, but that didn't stop someone like Nadya Suleman from gaming the system and getting disability for her children.

How active are you advocating for the disabled?

[calamityjohn]

"no one is being forced" .. just demonized ... and ridiculed .. and in NY given "sincerity tests" to prove their religious beliefs as they relate to their vaccine exemptions request ...

what % of children can be reasonably sacrifice for herd immunity ? .. who would be qualified to judge ? .. and who is qualified to judge this casual relationship when the implications for the families, big pharma and the rest of the medical industry and the government are so high .. when everybody involved has a massive conflict of interest in financial gain or liability ?

And the travesty that the media views Nadya Suleman as a sensational story but not the massive numbers of developmentally disabled on waiting lists for necessary services ..

Why do you ask - How active are you advocating for the disabled?
Why does that matter? Do you need some sort of test or screening to judge this poster's worth ?

[mogrammy]

Andy Wakefield is brilliant and really cares about our sick children. I am so glad he lives in the States now. Brian Deer and the other deniers of vaccine inuury are again attempting a smear campaign, boosted by "big pharma" and the rest of those people who will lose big bucks and big power when the truth be known about vaccines. We're getting there slowly but surely. Buckle up, you people that live by the need for dangerous vaccines.

[tschlak]

Get a clue! Did you NOT read the article?? He's a fraud. He was being paid by families who had a monetary stake in the findings that he fabricated. Spit out that Kool-Aid and read the science.

[Tulka2]

I want to throttle parents who smuggly tell me they don't have their own kids vacinated because, "all the other children are". Live on the west coast and hear that too much. I blame them on Ronald Reagan who took away fedral money for civics classes.

[MNmommy]

It's truly stunning. These folks want to destroy the herd immunity that it took decades to establish.

Additionally, it's beyond my comprehension what some of these desperate parents are doing to their already disabled children with the DAN! protocol. *Biomedical*? Really?

[calamityjohn]

"want to destroy the herd immunity" ... you will have to find me that quote where somebody expresses a desire to destroy herd immunity .. .

[TwentyCharactersLong]

I'm thinking that most of them don't know what herd immunity is.

[Horst]

Americans love their junk science...no surprise that the disgraced Dr. Wakefield moved to the US to set up shop.

[doug108]

Both my kids have gotten all the vaccinations our pediatrician has recommended. All of the diseases they've been vaccinated against are serious illnesses. Yes, even the chicken pox.

When I was 7 years old, I got the chicken pox and then developed something friendly called guillain-barre syndrome, which is associated with the chicken pox and leads to ascending paralysis. Though temporary (I was paralyzed for a month), the paralysis can cause cardiac arrest and other nasty issues.

The risks are minimal. The benefits immense. Just get your kids vaccinated.

[bensmyson]

Doug, that's too bad, I also got chicken pox, as did everyone I know, including the measles too back in the day before the MMR. However I don't recall anyone back then who was autistic, do you?

The risks may be minimal, say one in ten thousand, a million, but what if that one was your 12 month old son?

My son developed encephalitis from his MMRV (ProQuad) he said his last sentence after that. He began walking on his tippy-toes, spinning, and not looking anyone in the eye, all symptomatic of a child with autism. This happened immediately after the vaccines. His brain injury is well documented. There is no genetic abnormality, DNA or RNA all checked out. No family history, no nothing. Only a coincidental event, vaccine jab and a severe brain injury presenting itself as autism.

To me the risks are enormous, even if the odds are in your favor.

[TwentyCharactersLong]

"However I don't recall anyone back then who was autistic, do you?"

The term "autistic" refers to a lot more people nowadays than it did back then, which is why you hear of things like the Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The only people diagnosed a few decades ago were the ones who had such major symptoms that only a mental institution can help them.

"The risks may be minimal, say one in ten thousand, a million, but what if that one was your 12 month old son?"

And what if your 12 month old son gets measles because he wasn't vaccinated?

[Mildmannered]

the paralysis must have been scary for both you and your parents.

[fightingautism]

While I respect the Post's desire to provide non-biased information, I'm a bit dismayed that anything about Dr. Wakefield from brian deer is considered worthy of posting. Deer is some sort of Wakefield-obsessed psychopath. Half of his statements are so glaringly false it's a wonder the good Doctor has not filed defamation of character suits against this tabloid writer.

Dr. Wakefield is a hero and pioneer in autism research. I celebrate his accomplishments and am very thankful to have him on our team. I say Hugh Laurie play Dr. Wakefield in a major motion picture!

[PhilS32767]

Oh but Wakefield *did* sue Deer for defamation of character.
And *lost*.
Wakefield is no hero in my book.
My autistic son deserves better.
Much better.
Wakefield is no better than Bettelheim.
He has sold our kids down the river with his scientific fraud.

[Paradym]

Wakefiled applied to patents on a supposedly improved and safer MMR vaccine the year before he published his fateful study. Therefore he had a vested interest in calling the safety of the MMR vaccine into question.

Wakefield’s “theory” of autism was that the MMR vaccine caused inflammatory bowel disease which allowed proteins from the vaccine to gain access to the nervous system, causing autism. He therefore argued that by treating measles infection autism could be helped or even cured. He and the Royal Free Hospital with which he partnered stood to profit from their treatment regimen for autism which targeted measles infection.

Further, it is alleged that the hospital’s lab used improper PCR technique in detecting measles RNA in autistic children. A later study failed to replicate their results.

Most of Wakefield’s co-authors withdrew their names from the paper and the Lancet has issued a retraction.

[ConfuciusSay-]

If you fight with facts, you'll have much better success. Just look at the Bush years.

[calamityjohn]

yep the for profit - limit their liability - peddle their influence - big pharma / medical industry has been such a reliable source of information .. 65 years of work on autism and they can tell me that my son can't speak because of a complex interaction of our genes and unknown environmental factor that they are positive is not the vaccines they made ..

[MrBwood]

as long as these parents keep their kids away from mine I could care less if they get them vaccinated. But bring them to school, or a park to play with others. or restaurants, or supermarkets. I do mind.

[calamityjohn]

It is the park, the school, and the supermarket where people seem to shun my vaccinated and severely disabled son ... much more than my two healthy unvaccinated daughters ..

[Gib]

I just watched a documentary about the recent anti-polio vaccination campaign in India. The doco went back in history to look at how the concept of vaccination was developed. It then talked about the scourge of smallpox, and showed how many thousands of dedicated individuals took the vaccination program into the farthest reaches of the world in the late 60s and early 70s, until finally smallpox was eliminated. This was the greatest public health success ever (excluding civil engineering works providing clean water and sewage disposal). The recent attempt to stop polio in India involved two million workers, innoculating all children under the age of five. We saw how in some areas a combination of religious attitudes (especially Islam) and ignorance put obstacles in the path of the campaign, which nonetheless was ultimately very successful in reducing polio dramatically.

It is just amazing that the same ignorant and prejudiced opposition to vaccination exists in the wealthiest country in the world. It seems that villagers living in near poverty in India are more receptive to scientific advances than many supposedly well-educated and affluent people in the USA. This is astounding, and deeply depressing.

[easarsfield]

Personally, I think that vaccines are developed by people passionate about preventing diseases. Unfortunately, they are manufactured by corporations that want to sell, sell, sell. There's big money for those that can put a vaccination out on the market!

I was born in 1983 when the recommended # of vaccines for babies was 10. Now it is 36!!! I don't know many 25 year olds that have died or have been seriously impaired by a disease that we now recommend vaccinating babies for. is it really necessary to vaccinate your child against the chicken pox??

Don't even get me started with Gardasil. No one is coming NEAR me with that vaccine. It hasn't even been fully tested for safety, it was only tested for 3 1/2 years!! And Merck, the vaccine manufacturor, has been agressively lobbying to have this vaccine made mandatory for girls. That's scary.

[ConfuciusSay-]

Gardasil is nowhere near as scary as cervical cancer. Your risk assessment is fallacious.

[discourse jockey]

I will never vaccinate a child of mine, ever, period. I gotta save the money to have a friendly doctor mutilate my son(s)'s foreskin(s). America, I love you.

[doug108]

Only one place in the world can be that inspiring and horrifying at the same time.

[3dtrix]

Don't get out much, eh?

[nowGo4ward]

We need people like Andrew Wakefield, and we need many more of them in all aspects of healthcare, government, and every occupation.

[kassandrasduplex]

I hope you are being sincere as I agree. Notice the media seem intent on disproving any link to autism as the campaign to discredit the proponents moves forward. No article in the mainstream media ever promotes the theory positively, ever.
Early evidence of toxicity from thimerasol and mercury in vaccines goes back many decades.

[discourse jockey]

You sincerely agree that we need more professionals who falsify data? No further questions.

[goldbry]

That is because there are no definitive studies showing a link - anywhere, ever.

There are a few marginal studies that were subsequently discredited.

[ConfuciusSay-]

"No article in the mainstream media ever promotes the theory positively, ever. "

And that proves it to you?

[nowGo4ward]

The only questions I have now about our "mainstream" media are concerning how long and to what extent have we been left uninformed and misinformed on other subjects.

[TwentyCharactersLong]

We need more people who commit wholesale fraud, not to mention use sample sizes of twelve?

[nowGo4ward]

Dr. Wakefield is under “trial” not because of any complaint brought by parents of his patients, but because he expressed an opinion that was inconvenient to the medical-pharmaceutical-governmental agenda of getting as many vaccinations into the population as early and as profitably as possible. He expressed his honest opinion based on what he was seeing in these children, and it needed to be expressed. These children deserve care and protection and honest, even if painful, investigation of the truth.

The U.K. and the U.S. are now seeing epidemics of children with immune and neurological damage, asthma, autism, ADHD, allergies, diabetes, sometimes fatal in outcome, often life-shortening, and definitely long-term in suffering, but never mind that! Keep on this course full steam ahead!!! Refuse informed consent! Refuse patient choice! Refuse redress! Keep the public scared of disease! And never study the never-vaccinated or the vaccine injured!!!

How do these “authorities” expect to keep up public confidence in their “recommendations” if this is how they treat the children under their care? Health care authorities may be perfectly comfortable with focusing only on the numbers of infectious disease outbreaks and ignoring the environmental health of their population (or blindly profiting from the lack thereof), but we as parents and a society don’t have that luxury. We are responsible for the overall well-being of our children and we are failing them, and we are all paying for this.

[discourse jockey]

I presume you have solid evidence that the prevalence of those illnesses you mentioned is caused by vaccinations.

[3dtrix]

The uptick in various maladies COULDN'T be caused by eating crap food filled with additives and preservatives, or heavy metals in the water, or dioxin, or a thousand other environmental pollutants which might combine in ways that haven't even begun to be studied, could they? It has to the vaccines, doesn't it? Even though no reliable research has concluded so, and even though uncounted millions of lives have been undeniably saved. News flash - it's a cult.

[nowGo4ward]

It is misleading and irresponsible on the part of Brian Deer to suggest Dr. Wakefield is responsible for the lack of MMR uptake. MMR usage was declining three years before Dr. Wakefield's Lancet report.

It would be more appropriate for him to look into the health of the population receiving the MMR, and more responsible to advocate for informed consent and disease prevention choice that best protects the individual.

http://www.jabs.org.uk/pages/yazbak-blame.asp

Is Mr. Deer as credible in his presentation of other “facts” in this report?