A Statement from Jenny McCarthy & Jim Carrey: Andrew Wakefield, Scientific Censorship, and Fourteen Monkeys

Los Angeles, February 5, 2010

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers and public health officials.

It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues. 

The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England’s General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers served as judge and jury. Dr. Wakefield strenuously denies all the findings of the GMC and plans a vigorous appeal.

Despite rampant misreporting, Dr. Wakefield’s original paper regarding 12 children with severe bowel disease and autism never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not vaccines cause autism, and The Lancet’s retraction gets us no closer to understanding this complex issue.

Dr. Wakefield is one of the world’s most respected and well-published gastroenterologists. He has published dozens of papers since 1998 in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals all over the world. His work documenting the bowel disease of children with autism and his exploration of novel ways to treat bowel disease has helped relieve the pain and suffering of thousands of children with autism.

For the past decade, parents in our community have been clamoring for a relatively simple scientific study that could settle the debate over the possible role of vaccines in the autism epidemic once and for all: compare children who have been vaccinated with children who have never received any vaccines and see if the rate of autism is different or the same.

Few people are aware that this extremely important work has not only begun, but that a study using an animal model has already been completed exploring this topic in great detail.

Dr. Wakefield is the co-author, along with eight other distinguished scientists from institutions like the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Washington, of a set of studies that explore the topic of vaccinated versus unvaccinated neurological outcomes using monkeys.

The first phase of this monkey study was published three months ago in the prestigious medical journal Neurotoxicology, and focused on the first two weeks of life when the vaccinated monkeys received a single vaccine for Hepatitis B, mimicking the U.S. vaccine schedule. The results, which you can read for yourself HERE, were disturbing. Vaccinated monkeys, unlike their unvaccinated peers, suffered the loss of many reflexes that are critical for survival.

Dr. Wakefield and his scientific colleagues are on the brink of publishing their entire study, which followed the monkeys through the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule over a multi-year period. It is our understanding that the difference in outcome for the vaccinated monkeys versus the unvaccinated controls is both stark and devastating.

There is no question that the publication of the monkey study will lend substantial credibility to the theory that over-vaccination of young children is leading to neurological damage, including autism. The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it’s no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.

Behind the scenes, the pressure to keep the work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues from being published is immense, and growing every day. Medical journals take extreme risk of backlash in publishing any studies that question the safety of the vaccination program, no matter how well-designed and thorough the research might be. Neurotoxicology, a highly-respected medical journal, deserves great credit for courageously publishing the first phase of this vaccinated monkey study.

The press has been deeply misled in the way The Lancet retraction, and Dr. Wakefield’s mock trial, have been characterized. Led by the pharmaceutical companies and their well-compensated spokespeople, Dr. Wakefield is being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign designed to prevent this important new work from seeing the light of day.

What medical journal would want to step in front of this freight train? Moreover, why now, after 12 years of inaction, did The Lancet and GMC suddenly act? Is it coincidence that the monkey study is currently being submitted to medical journals for review and publication?

We urge the media to take a close look at the first phase of the monkey study discussed above and to start asking a very simple question: What was the final outcome of the 14 primates that were vaccinated using the U.S. vaccine schedule and how did that compare to the unvaccinated controls?

The U.S. vaccine schedule has grown from 10 vaccines given to our children in the 1980s to 36 today, perfectly matching the dramatic rise in autism. The work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues deserves to be shared with the world to further, rather than censor, scientific progress. 

Comments

[Gina Sellon]

Hello To All I am speaking from two prospectives one from a mother who didn't vaccinate and also from a person who works in
alternative health care services that has decades of experience in finding and working on
those of us with environmental toxicity. My children had a huge advantage over others in my opinion as they were dubbed (gifted)possible
advantage because of not being vaccinated? At least they did not have that lifelong burden to carry. I have personally talked to and shared the pain of those parents who have lost
their children to vaccine injury. Also recently saw an 18 mo. old with admitted vaccine injury. ( Received the prepared multiple vaccine for another child and immediately went into seizure.) So, while facts and figures are being thrown around. Our
loved ones are being injured unnecessarily. With the promotion of people who are NOT IN THE TRENCHES with the resulting suffering.
Why don't we just stop it and FIND OUT FIRST!
If anybody believes that we have chemical deficiences in our body. Where are the receptor sites? Is there a receptor site in the body for MERCURY? Why did our ancestors LIVE without all these chemicals? Do chemicals, heavy metals, foreign tissues introduced into the blood stream of children with undeveloped immune systems really strengthen the immune systems? What about the toxic loads we all deal with everyday. Could this be adding to it? Is there a cumilitive build up. Was the liver ( which does most of the work of detoxifying the body) designed to
filter out these designer chemicals? STOP PLAYING AROUND WITH PEOPLES LIVES. THERE ARE
healthier ways to deal with infection!!!

[Melinda Sue Wallace]

There has been a change in the diagnostic methods for autism in children. One interesting change is that all nurses (and some Medical Laboratory Technicians) are being offered continuing education credit through an on-line training program conducted by, "Advance for Nurses". These training programs help nurses to identify very subtle difference in healthy verses autistic children. A nurse who observes these changes can then make a referral for the child to be evaluated. Because of this, many more children are being referred and evaluated, hence a dramatic increase in the number of children who are diagnosed.
Another benefit is that children are being identified earlier, when intervention is most effective.

I'm 53 and I honestly never heard much about autism until my 30s. Pediatricians did not perform any evaluations for autism during routine well baby care. Many children completely escaped diagnosis. I'm not completely surprised by the increases in the number of reported cases of autism, there have always been children who didn't speak or respond socially, we just didn't have a name for the condition. My mother was a Special Education Teacher for both mentally ill and mentally retarded children. She supervised two classrooms without 12 children each. Back then, the 1960's, there was no diagnosis for these kids. No one had answers. Here's hoping things will change.

[Barbara MacArthur]

I am glad that Dr Wakefield has been exposed at last. I believe that autism is purely genetic. MMR cannot cause autism. If a child has autism after injections, it is just coincidence. Autism was there already and would have shown up eventually.

I should like to add that despite my son having so-called ‘learning difficulties’, despite his being unable to speak or be accepted by a school until he was about 10 years old, despite when he was small being referred to by a consultant as a ‘write-off’, despite my being told to stop sacrificing myself and to ‘put him in an institution and forget him’, eventually he progressed so well that he was able to attend University and graduated in computer science. I still have the letter from the education authority saying he could not be educated because of his ‘disability of mind’. I meant to frame it one day!

At the time of my son’s diagnosis the following thoughts popped into my head, as the medical people looked so solemn:

They told me you were Different - Autistic
I told them I was optimistic
How could they know
I love you so
Because you are - DIFFERENT!

[Sarah Jones]

The fact that Julie has posted here that there has never been a double-blind trial on vaccines using primate subjects illustrates the astounding level of ignorance on this subject among the supporters of McCarthy's dangerous and ill-conceived campaign.

Does this woman really think she is qualified to give medical advice the consequences of which are potentially fatal for people's children? She is nothing more nor less than an irresponsible crackpot.

[John Stone]

Sarah

The GMC has a much real legitimacy as a lynch mob - a show trial in which the defence was never heard:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/340/feb02_4/c644#231147

[Twyla]

Sarah Jones, it is you who are "ill-informed".

[Sarah Jones]

The description of the GMC as a "kangaroo court" reveals how little the authors really know about science.

Unsurprising, considering the fact that the same pair advocate homeopathy.

The fact that a scientist may be generally respected and widely published in no way guarantees the quality of every report they produce. None of the arguments in the above article convince me that there is any merit in the view that Wakefield is in some way being "silenced".

I wonder whether these ill-informed and unqualified (although doubtless well-meaning) celebrities have any idea of the harm they do to their cause by making such allegations.

[Julie]

I am insulted that a double blind controlled study on primates has NEVER BEEN DONE before this and yet doctors -- supposed scientists -- insist I should subject my newborn daughter, and her completely immature immune system, to vaccines which are designed to irritate and stimulate her immune system.

Is it really so hard to believe that some children's immune systems do not respond well to immune interference??

Our kids are hit with a double whammy. Research shows that breast feeding (which is free) is needed to properly mature the human immune system, yet the majority of babies get formula made by pharmaceutical companies (ca-ching) by the time they are three months old. American pediatricians recommend one year of breast feeding, minimum. PLUS, their incomplete little immune systems are assaulted with immuno-irritants in the form of vaccines from Day 1, if parents consent to the hep shot.

Claimed "SAFETY" without testing is wishful thinking, not science.

It's NOT just autism I worry, as others point out. We have epidemics of life-threatening, chronic and acute, auto-immune disorders in kids -- diabetes, asthma, childhood cancers, even obesity.

After much research and reading, we decided to DELAY vaccination. We've decided to wait until she's at least a year old and has been breast fed at least a year before any vaccines. If I have my way, we'll wait until she's four, when the immune system is fully developed, and we'll go slow.

Any person with an understanding of basic science cannot deny that the current vaccine schedule is based on science that is INCOMPLETE, AT BEST.

The more loudly the pharmaceutical industry shouts down basic safety research, the more suspicious I become. They make money when women don't breast feed. They make money when babies get jabbed, and they make money treating chronic illnesses.

The profit motive here is undeniable. And so is the potential liability. But then, it took decades to take down the tobacco industry and we're seeing many of the same tactics here.

Including shill posts by Big Pharma employees, no doubt.

[Walter]

Has anyone ever spoken with Evan's Dad or paternal grandparents about the child they saw growing up ? I just wondered if their view is the same as Evan's mother.

[Christine]

I am a mother of a child with autism in metro DC. I think it would be prudent for anyone who wants to explore this issue to read "Autism's False Prophets" b y Offit - particularly the young girl who is doing her persuasive essay.

I think what is missing in the autism picture besides the cause and cure is the developmental pattern. Studies are showing things such as gross motor delays in the first 6-9 months as well as formation of the mouth/nose can be indicators. The latter is important as it points to a genetic in utero cause to autism. I don't doubt that some environmental factor is at play with autism, but I think it is what PARENTS (and their gametes) were exposed to that is where the answer lies.

Secondly, we have to be very careful about the successes of "therapies". Developmentally delayed children are notorious for explosive development - not having a skill and then "instantly" acquiring it. It is impossible to ever really verify what helps when we do so much for these kids and time does march on in their own developmental pattern. As rotten as age 2-5 is for many of these kids, many high functioning ones have a "honeymoon" of progress ages 5-10. So it is hard to say if therapies are working or if a delayed neuro circuit has just found its switch.

EVERY child should be fed well - something this country doesn't do with processed foods - and supplemented where needed. It improves the functioning of every child - not just those with autism.

Again, thanks for letting me post. I don't think autism is in our kids vaccines. I think it is in something that Jim Kerry, Jenny McCarthy, me and a whole host of other people ate, drank, wore, breathed or something. It has caused an epigenetic change - and even if we don't have that environmental factor anymore - the gene pool may very well be altered for good.