An Elaborate Fraud, Part 4: News Analysis -- The British Medical Association Is “Standing Up for Doctors” Even If It Means Attacking Patients
By Mark Blaxill
If you go to the web-site of the British Medical Association you will find the BMA’s tag line prominently displayed: “Standing up for doctors.” It’s a position most notable for what they do not stand up for: not patients, not science, not health, just the doctors who join the association. The home page elaborates what this means more directly, “We are … an independent trade union dedicated to protecting individual members and the collective interests of doctors.”
In other words, The BMA is an unabashed economic entity: a trade union. And its primary purpose is to defend the money and power of its members. It’s that simple. Who does the BMA stand against? The adversary of the day might vary a bit. But on a day to day basis, the biggest conflicts British doctors face are with patients. When patients comply with what doctors tell them to do and generate income for them, they are useful to the BMA. When they want to take control of their own families’ health, or worse, suggest that member doctors may have caused harm, well that’s a different matter. When patients' interests conflict with “standing up for doctors,” It’s pretty clear what the BMA’s job is.
The BMA attacks critical patients as if they were their enemy.
One of its instruments for defending doctors’ interests is “science,” or more accurately, propaganda masquerading as science. Notably, the BMA publishes the British Medical Journal, the journal that earlier this year disseminated Brian Deer’s accusations of fraud against Andrew Wakefield. Despite Wakefield’s lengthy and Byzantine trial on allegations surrounding his medical ethics and research design in front of the General Medical Council (GMC), allegations of scientific fraud were not part of the GMC proceedings. Until January 2011, freelance reporter Brian Deer, and Deer alone, had accused Wakefield of lying about data and falsifying evidence. That is, until the BMJ entered the mix, effectively certifying the validity of Deer’s 2009 accusations in The Sunday Times with a dramatic flourish that proved even more devastating to Wakefield’s reputation than the GMC trial. How devastating were these accusations? In a press release, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee claimed to be “struck by a comparison between researcher Andrew Wakefield’s fraud and Piltdown man, that great paleontological hoax that led people to believe for 40 years that the missing link between man and ape had been found.” Sadly, these extravagant allegations were picked up by the global media, spread like wildfire, and, despite their manifest implausibility, the charges stuck.
For any doctor or scientist who might ever have been inclined to support a critical patient the message was clear: when the BMA and its flagship journal the BMJ go after you, they will be ruthless.
Lost in the frenzy over Wakefield’s alleged scientific fraud, however, is the fact that the origin of the evidence in the 1998 Lancet article never came from Wakefield. Rather, the Royal Free Hospital's investigation (which included many others beyond Wakefield) was launched based on the collection and reporting of observations originally made by parents. These parental observations included varying forms of regressive autism or encephalitis, inflammatory bowel disease and a temporal association between exposure to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) and the onset of symptoms. As time has passed (and in every one of the cases reported in The Lancet paper), the parents’ continuing reports support Wakefield’s original account. In addition, many thousands of parents have subsequently reported an identical sequence of events. At kitchen tables all over the world, the MMR has become known as “the autism shot.” The heart of the matter, therefore, is the tension between the British medical establishment on one hand and the Lancet parents on the other.
So in accusing Wakefield, the BMJ is really doing something else; they are accusing the Lancet parents of committing an elaborate fraud.
Why would the BMJ condone such an aggressive attack? Sadly again, in publishing Deer’s accusations, the house organ of the BMA was advancing the interest neither of science nor the truth. Instead, they were “standing up for doctors”: for the income doctors gain from frequent visits to the doctor to receive vaccination; for doctors’ freedom to avoid costly minutes with skeptical parents during their well-child visits; and for the power of doctors to force parents to comply with the recommended vaccination schedule.
As for Deer’s reporting, while Wakefield provided the proximate target, not far under the surface lurked an aggressive attack on parents who have the temerity to question the mandates of the BMA and public health officials. It’s quite a ruthless attack: Parents who question vaccine safety are a danger to the public health; Parents who allege vaccine injury are liars; Parents who take offense to intimidation and coercion are anti-vaccine campaigners; Parents who seek resources to support a vaccine-injured child are cheating the system to get rich.
This kind of attack is not delicate work. But in making the decision to tie its reputation to Deer’s, the BMA made a risky choice.
One need not look very far to find evidence of Deer’s boorishness. It’s most plainly exemplified by his unvarnished contempt for noncompliant parents. One widely circulated example was provoked following on-line challenges to Deer’s reporting by three autism parents: Lancet 12 mother Isabella Thomas, Age of Autism Contributing Editor John Stone and a third unnamed blogger. Jumping into the fray in a Pharma-friendly blog, Deer had this to say about the critical parents (see HERE)
And they wonder why their children have problems with their brains.
Apparently not content with just this brief insult, Deer elaborated further (see HERE )
I genuinely think that the three individuals I was criticising – and I know who all three of them are – do need to question whether their personal behavioural issues are indicative of a better explanation for their children’s issues. Certainly a lot better explanation than MMR.
The festering nastiness, the creepy repetitiveness, the weasly, deceitful, obsessiveness, all signal pathology to me
Deer has reserved special antipathy for Isabella Thomas, the mother of two of the twelve Lancet cases. Mrs. Thomas has most publicly opposed Deer, so his public comments about her plainly demonstrate his bias: Deer’s presumption that in a dispute between BMA members and unsatisfied parents, the parents are always guilty and the doctors are always right. (see HERE)
There was the case of one mother, for instance, whose story is now in the public domain and entirely reportable, who had two children. Her GP gave evidence that he believed she obsessively sought unnecessary treatment for the children, to their detriment. He said he felt she was harming their interests. She fell out with her local hospital, and with a previous GP, who were not convinced by her...
There is a reckoning coming, I think. Skulking behind medical confidentiality, legal privilege and hapless kids won’t do it forever. There is a public interest here, and that, I think, will eventually prevail.
Deer’s thinly veiled threats aren’t limited to Isabella Thomas. He has also criticized Lancet 12 parent Rosemary Kessick, another parent who has criticized Deer’s methods and refused to back down. Deer’s interactions with Kessick included an outright lie about his identity, an interaction my Age of Autism colleague Dan Olmsted described last week (see An Elaborate Fraud, Part 2: In Which a Murdoch Newspaper’s Deceptive Tactics Infect the British Medical Journal ). The ultimate intent of Deer’s narrative was to accuse Kessick of lying (see HERE).
I interviewed Mrs Rosemary Kessick… and, in four hours of recorded material, found her account of events surrounding her son's vaccination and history to be unsatisfactory. It is my belief that a great deal of material placed before the public is also of a misleading nature.
In these and other intemperate statements, Brian Deer remains unrepentant, and as long as the medical industry protects him against the consequences of his actions, he feels secure, even triumphant, in his position. Our series “An Elaborate Fraud” began last week and will continue to demonstrate that it is Deer’s account of events that is the only unsatisfactory and misleading material being placed before the public.
But as far as the BMA goes, it should be concerned about something more threatening to its long term mission of representing doctors: guilt by association with Brian Deer and his unethical methods. As we’re beginning to learn, Deer’s work was deeply enmeshed with the “anything goes,” “the ends justifies the means” culture of News International, Rupert Murdoch’s criminally corrupt British newspaper empire. As the News International saga unfolds, many more people of conscience will begin to ask the question, what did the BMA condone in their assault on patients who didn’t pay proper fealty to the sovereignty of British doctors and who needed to stand down?
There are signs that the BMA is already concerned over its accountability for the Wakefield Inquisition. A few months ago, Age of Autism’s John Stone was successful in extracting an admission of conflict of interest from the BMA. This concession was made grudgingly in an essay titled, “In response to John Stone” by BMJ editor Fiona Godlee. Godlee wrote (BMJ Content)
“we should have declared the BMJ Group's income from Merck as a competing interest to the editorial (and the two editor's choice articles) that accompanied Brian Deer's [MMR] series... We should also, as you say, have declared the group's income from GSK as a competing interest in relation to these articles....We didn't declare these competing interests because it didn't occur to us to do so.”
The formal (but as John Stone points out, merely partial) concession followed (see Age of Autism: Farce at British Medical Journal as Double Standards Persist Over Undeclared Competing Interest)
“The BMJ should have declared competing interests in relation to this editorial by Fiona Godlee and colleagues...The BMJ Group receives advertising and sponsorship revenue from vaccine manufacturers, and specifically from Merck and GSK, which both manufacture MMR vaccines.”
In most businesses, service providers understand that going to war with their customers rarely ends well. So far, the medical industry and its partners in the public health bureaucracies have managed to sell the media the line that the controversies in autism pit “parents vs. science.” Sadly, true science is the casualty in this narrative, one in which the real battle is defined by economic and political difference between doctors and their powerful trade associations on one hand and critical, determined parents on the other. And the BMA is revealing itself as part of a long line of economically interested parties—from tobacco companies to the leaded gasoline industry—that put their own bottom line ahead of the health of children.
We’ll have more on Deer and his sponsors at the British Medical Association in the days and weeks ahead.
--
Mark Blaxill is Editor-at-Large of Age of Autism. He is the co-author, with Dan Olmsted, of The Age of Autism – Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-made Epidemic, to be published in paperback in September by Thomas Dunne Books.
BMJ is receiving regular financial contribution from Merck
and GSK,they will determine what goes into the material
and what is the agenda."Did not occur to Dr.Godlee that they need to declare competing interest???" And they are suprised why the parents lost trust in the medical system.
They only publish what fits their agenda and are all working for big pharma,the system serves their interests and not the patients.We have a system failure.
Posted by: oneVoice | July 31, 2011 at 11:41 PM
Post script:
Oh, and I should have added that a lot of times these parents that think nothing is wrong with thier kids may have at one time did feel something was not right, and the first ones they run to is the doctors and the first doctors are the peds.
Ask a ped "Do you think my child might has autism?"
Answer always, that is after they give a good hard laugh in the parent's face - of just how silly that parent is - they then reassure: " Some children are difficult, and they are just trying to show their independence from you, some are late bloomers, but autism - oh really!
Ped has the final word on this!
The End!
But of course it is not.
Posted by: Benedetta | July 31, 2011 at 03:28 PM
Actually Sarah is right.
The public is scared to death of brain injuries, or any trouble with mental health.
A lot of parents have chosen
Brain injury, or trouble thinking don't run in our family,or it is something that will never hit our family.
They choose to put their heads in the sand and ignore the problem, easier to do if their kid is not so very sick, and is high functioning.
Many of a time I have been in the midst of trying something new, or going to yet another professional assocatied with mental health, or behavior, or psych or neurologist (esp them because of my suspion of seizures) and my own mother has gotten on to me that I need to leave the boy be; that I am going to ruin him, and his self esteem.
But the problem does not go away of course.
A lot of kids moving back home after college, and of course many are blaming the fact that the economics is to blame, only this trend was going on before the economy hit rock bottom????
It takes the very bravest of people not to lie to themselves.
Posted by: Benedetta | July 30, 2011 at 08:27 PM
The first paragraph alone is a shocker.
Why on earth did we ever believe the British Medical Journal is respectable and honorable when the BMA is a trade union dedicated to the best interests of doctors?
The house of cards built by Deer and his sponsors won't be standing for long. Should be fun to watch it tumble.
Thank you Mark and Dan for this excellent series.
Posted by: Bye-bye Becky F. | July 30, 2011 at 06:01 PM
Lady Gaga is a very astute self-publicist, and she does it by being weird. But I doubt whether she is anything for us to worry about: Dr Godlee is another matter.
Posted by: John Stone | July 30, 2011 at 05:06 PM
@Sarah
"Call me crazy but I think the public is being systematically brainwashed to stay silent. Perhaps through the media (drug ads?). Even music videos. Lady Gaga videos which are widely viewed are particularly strange to me. Strange imagery, lots of occult symbolism. Like some cryptic mind control going on. Very sinister.
Are we part of some kind of massive psych op? Does anyone else feel this way? Is the autism crisis part of a master plan to weaken our democracy with the goal of total control over the population?"
...Indeed, please read some of the articles on this website
http://vigilantcitizen.com/
Posted by: Symbols-rule-the-world | July 30, 2011 at 08:00 AM
Thanks for the big picture on this, Mark. It is a reminder of who we are: voices for our children. And why we must speak up: because the medical establishment will not speak for us. ASD parents and allies, unite!
BTW, readers, Google "Brian Deer." He is beginning to get a taste of his own medicine. How long until he snaps?
Posted by: Dan E. Burns - SavingBenBook.com | July 30, 2011 at 07:21 AM
http://www.slingshotpublications.com/
Bev - Martin Walker compiled two books of parents' stories, about vaccine damage to their children. They include several of the Lancet 12 parents.
Silent Witnessess volumes 1 and 2, available from the above site.
Posted by: Jenny Allan | July 30, 2011 at 03:00 AM
Media scholar-I'm not quite sure what your reference to Reagan is supposed to mean
-----------------------------
This
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY
Posted by: Media Scholar | July 29, 2011 at 08:24 PM
I would like to see the "12" write their own story. Possibly titled..."The Truth Will Set You Free: The Real Story Behind The Andrew Wakefield Study." Brian Deer you will get yours in the end. What goes around comes around.
Posted by: Bev | July 29, 2011 at 07:09 PM
I don't know how many of these cold-war categories apply.
------------------------
All of them.
The London Times wire tapped GSK, too. Right? They have all the E-mails between Brian Deer and all of his secret friends Right?
Without those this is a duel with a single pistol. Um, that's an execution.
Posted by: Media Scholar | July 29, 2011 at 06:48 PM
Anne,
I've wondered this too. Where is the curiosity of the major networks over the skyrocketing autism rates? I'm perplexed as to why people I know, even in my own family, seem reluctant to discuss the autism crisis. A wall goes up. Like they are scared, or feel it's a taboo topic.
Call me crazy but I think the public is being systematically brainwashed to stay silent. Perhaps through the media (drug ads?). Even music videos. Lady Gaga videos which are widely viewed are particularly strange to me. Strange imagery, lots of occult symbolism. Like some cryptic mind control going on. Very sinister.
Are we part of some kind of massive psych op? Does anyone else feel this way? Is the autism crisis part of a master plan to weaken our democracy with the goal of total control over the population?
Disrupt- the 9-11 attack
Disable- autism, cancer, other health issues to weaken
Destroy- our democracy
I see every day we are losing more and more of our freedom. It's a very scary time.
Posted by: Sarah | July 29, 2011 at 05:11 PM
Media scholar-I'm not quite sure what your reference to Reagan is supposed to mean...I hope you are not casting him as a defender of the people's rights. He has done more to undermine the rights of the average citizen in this country than anyone. Besides, vaccination poisoning is not a left-right issue. Both sides of the political spectrum are implicated in this travesty, which is a direct result of the corruption of government officials by powerful corporations, individuals and groups that are controlling our world. It is an issue of the people against the ruling class, and at the present time the people are losing. The balance of power needs to be upset. People need to wake up. Until then, we can expect more of the same.
Posted by: CT teacher | July 29, 2011 at 04:55 PM
I am truly looking forward to the date when we stop "shooting the messenger" and advocating to "now what?" Hopefully this is followed by listening to the parents, examining and treating the children based on their needs.
Thank you Mark for continuing to push for that dialog and actually productive movements forward. Not a minute more should be wasted.
Posted by: Lisa @ TACA | July 29, 2011 at 04:47 PM
What is clear to me, especially after last Jan when news outlets went into a Wakefield feeding frenzy, is the fact that no one wants to know what really happened to these children. No one wants to honestly investigate this. CNN turned their coverage over to Brian Deer and let him accuse Wakefield of every kind of fraud. But what was most noticeable to me was the failure of the major networks and newspapers to talk to a single parent. Why didn’t even one of them get to tell their story? After all, wasn’t this whole thing about the patients he wrote about in the Lancet? Why weren’t they covered?
How much more obvious can it be that this is a desperate cover up? Right now in the media there are calls for stricter scrutiny when it comes to what gets published as “peer-reviewed.” See BCC story. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14314501 And what example does the BBC cite as bad science that got out? –Andrew Wakefield in the Lancet. This sends a strong message to journals that what they publish can’t spark controversy.
In truth, this is more about self-protection than it is about science.
In Callous Disregard, Dr. Wakefield made the comment, “The evidence revealed collusion at the highest levels of the medical establishment.” (p. 49)
Self-protection is a powerful motivation and this is made clear in his book. “[I]t was the UK government that was (and presumably still is) liable for SKB’s MMR vaccine damage.” (p. 74)
Let’s stop pretending that officials don’t have compelling reasons to want this controversy ended. Former Chief Scientific Officer in UK, Peter Fletcher, said exactly that in 2006 in the Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-376203/Former-science-chief-MMR-fears-coming-true.html
Fletcher: “If it is proven that the jab causes autism, ‘the refusal by governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history.
‘But it is the steady accumulation of evidence, from a number of respected universities, teaching hospitals and laboratories around the world, that matters here. There's far too much to ignore. Yet government health authorities are, it seems, more than happy to do so.
‘There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves.’"
Anne Dachel, Media
Posted by: Anne McElroy Dachel | July 29, 2011 at 03:20 PM
The Daily Prophet (London Times, BMJ, Tribune) reports that Ministry Officials (PHS, HHS, AAP, GMC, GSK, MERCK) vociferously deny any possibility that Voldemort (Vaccines) has returned and is hurting people (could cause bowel disease, autism or other ill health). Anyone who says so, like Harry Potter and his friends, or Dumbledore (parents, DAN docs, Wakefield, et al) is a liar and should be removed from their posts and thrown into Azkaban.
Even my 8 year old understands this stuff. I think most people do. Waiting for the day Deer defends himself by claiming he was under the Imperius curse. Wormtail, indeed.
Posted by: Garbo | July 29, 2011 at 03:17 PM
Medical trade unions foster the illusion of being patient friendly, when in reality they exist to protect the financial interests of their dues-paying members.
Consumers must band together to demand recourse from sellers and promoters of legalized toxins, to prevent health damage from continuing. Join the Canary Party!
Posted by: nhokkanen | July 29, 2011 at 02:41 PM
I just finished reading _Let Them Eat Prozac_ by Dr. David Healy, once a favorite of the pharmaceutical industry. Great book. Lots of inside baseball. I'll let you research it yourself. I just checked out his website, www.healyprozac.com, and found something under "Academic Stalking" that sounds especially familiar:
"In my case, after the issue of the University of Toronto breaching my contract became public in 2001, the media contacted both the university and me. The university directed reporters to J. Coyne, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The reports that I have from journalists who contacted Dr. Coyne indicate they found his responses off-putting and did not use them. Coyne wrote instead to the Globe and Mail, the British Medical Journal and elsewhere, voicing his concerns that Healy’s research was flawed and the only surprise about the Healy case was that anyone had seen fit to hire him in the first instance.
As it transpired, unbeknownst to me, Coyne had been contributing to a psychology listserv for some time before this. The tone of these communications across a range of issues and people is abusive. The authoritative note when it comes to issues to do with me is surprising given that Coyne has never contacted me for clarification of anything. The bombardment has continued over 6 years, suggesting a certain obsessive preoccupation - or academic stalking. Until recently, I regarded this stalking as a minor irritation.
In 2004, however, the stakes became higher. In February 2004, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened a panel to consider the question of suicidality on antidepressants in trials conducted in children. In a first official recognition of this problem, the panel concluded there were grounds for concern. A further hearing was scheduled in September 2004. Prior to the September hearing, Pfizer made a submission to the FDA web site. This was a 50-page “billet doux” full of sweeping accusations about Healy that bore considerable resemblances to the points made by Coyne.
FDA refused to post a response from me. This response was later posted on the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) web site and appeared as an article in Ethical Human Sciences.
In January 2005, Britain brought in a Freedom of Information Act. I applied to Lilly, Pfizer and GSK to get material they held on me and got 116 pieces of information from Lilly. These suggest that the company put people in audiences when I am presenting, consider legal action against me on the basis of reports that appear in the media, prefer not to fund events in which I am a participant, and have worked out standard responses to Healy issues including dismissing what I do as motivated by involvement as an expert witness in legal actions....
In March 2006, I received a letter from the General Medical Council (GMC), the body with whom all British physicians have to register in order to practice. This is a body that has the powers to strike a physician off. It was a letter of complaint. The letter from the GMC to me contained a letter to the GMC by David Nutt, a professor of psychiatry and psychopharmacology in Bristol, in which Nutt refers to details in the Coyne article as the grounds for a possible complaint...."
Posted by: Carol | July 29, 2011 at 02:21 PM
Wow. Brian Deer blames children's autism on parents' personalities. I don't even have the words.... Actually, I do, but I doubt they'd be published here.
Anyone associated with Brian Deer is tainted. How long will it be before the BMA, BMJ, etc. start trying to distance themselves from him? That should be interesting to watch.
What an embarrassment he is.
Posted by: Kristina | July 29, 2011 at 02:21 PM
MediaScholar
I don't know how many of these cold-war categories apply. The government bureacracy in the UK has latterly been marked by its cronyism with big industry (Ministry of Defence would be a good example, the Treasury another, and yes, the media). It all falls out a bit differently from the US and there are sinister old boy network controls on everything (for instance the GMC). Whether any of this is Marxist in inspiration would be hard to say. Maybe it is in part to do with being a much smaller country.
I think it is signifcant that network was used in the UK to take out Andrew Wakefield for wider global consumption. The GMC nonsense could not be rigged in the US (for example) though other things, as we have seen, could be: for instance, it was US press that stood to attention over BMJ's ridiculous claims, which went almost unreported in the UK. This game is being played across continents and different countris offer different possibilities for dirty tricks.
Posted by: John Stone | July 29, 2011 at 11:43 AM
When ye proffer the pigge and somebody checks the poke out, you better have your track shoes on.
Citizen Deer must face the facts that he has been exposed as a foreign spy from a Marxist government. He's not a science writer. He's a fixated broken record for the truth ministry of a police state.
When Reagan spoke up about why he left the Democratic party he said his reason was the leftists were dragging the party into the ideals of socialist labor government of Great Britain.
Citizen Deer is in a heap of trouble wherever people love freedom.
It appears at least a few of his fellow countrymen still do.
http://www.globalpost.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gp3_small_article/photos/13/UK_04_11_09_Goldfarb_CCTV.jpg
The UK press has the unfortunate task of spinning a career they hardly know anything about. The editors never thought twice about blow-back because they had no idea about what they were told to run quid for a stringer.
The UK media is freaking out over the fact that a British spy infiltrated the US to deliberately sabotage the legal rights of America's Autism injured children.
You know it's really bad when there's a cover up this big.
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/murdoch-and-vaccines-exposure-of-murdochs-crimes-expose-a-much-larger-story/
Andrew Wakefield was a respected British gastroenterologist who began research into digestive problems in autistic children in collaboration with other doctors in the UK, after being called by parents seeking help. His work indicated severe digestive issues and he asked for more investigation of the MMR vaccine.
Brian Deer is the reporter who savaged Dr Wakefield from the pages of the Sunday Times, a paper managed by Rupert Murdoch’s son James Murdoch who is on the board of GlaxoSmithKline which makes the MMR. Deer researched his case with the help of Medico-Legal Investigations, a private enquiry company whose only source of funding is the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. Deer was both the journalist writing on Wakefield and the person who brought a case of fitness to practice medicine to the General Medical Council, and then wrote about the proceedings as well.
Parents whose children were treated by Wakefield were denied the right to be heard before a real court on claims against the vaccine manufacturers. The High Court judge who denied them was Sir Nigel Davis, whose brother is an executive board member of Elsevier, publishers of the Lancet which removed Wakefield’s 1998 paper on the subject, and is on the Board of GlaxoSmithKline.
With the London Times giving Brian Deer free reign to attack Wakefield, media closed in like shark. Coincidentally, the head of Reuters serves on the Board of Merck, and Miriam Stoppard who writes at the Daily Mirror newspaper is married to Sir Christopher Hogg, who was Chairman of GlaxoSmith Kline in 2004. Dr Kumar, the Chairman of the GMC Fitness to Practice Panel who ruled against Dr Andrew Wakefield, would not answer questions about his shareholdings in GlaxoSmithKline, and said there was no such thing as vaccine damage and that any parents who claimed that their children had suffered such would be treated with scorn and contempt.
Wakefield lost his license to practice and left the UK. What had he done that Murdoch’s machine went into action, creating fictions about him, getting his work pulled from the Lancet, getting him brought before the GMC to ultimately lose his license?
Wakefield suggested that until further studies, the measles vaccine should be given as a separate vaccine rather than in combination as the MMR (measles, Mumps, Rubella). He did not suggest that children not take a measles vaccine, only that there be caution until the MMR was investigated further. This reasonable suggestion was met immediately by the single measles vaccines being taken off the market.
Wakefield’s work with Professor Walker-Smith and Professor Simon Murch had touched a nerve. The pharmaceutical industry, an industry that makes six times more than any industry on Wall Street is heavily invested in vaccines (in the US, the companies do not have to prove efficacy to get FDA approval) and is moving on every front to have their product mandated.
To suggest that one of the main vaccines for children might be destroying them mentally and physiologically was a problem, yet the study showed severe digestive system damage and mitochondrial dysfunction, as well. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been confirmed by other studies, but taking down Wakefield in a big way became a means of discrediting anyone questioning vaccines. Wakefield was cast as a fraud and so all those voicing concerns were dismissed by reference to him.
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/828/468/Rupert_Murdoch,_Brian_Deer,_Dr_Andrew_Wakefield_and_fabricated_lies.html
Posted by: Media Scholar | July 29, 2011 at 11:21 AM
Lets hope just like the PCC it is the end of the road and resignations shall follow at the BMJ shortly.
When the cops dig deeper into phone tapping how far did Deer and Murdoch go? Did Deer tap the Lancet parents kids phones or at Deers called blood party ,or Wakefields phone at the time in America... skeletons in the cupboard wouldn`t do it justice...larfing I mean who would have thought today the head of the PCC would be FORCED to resign...woooo!!wooo!!hip ! hip!Hoorah!!!how many times I wrote I can`t count on both arms and legs concerning Dr Wakefield and the Lancet 12 matters...
PCC confirms Baroness Buscombe is to step down
Chair will not seek to extend her three-year term, after criticism of her handling of the News of the World phone-hacking affair
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/29/pcc-baroness-buscombe-to-step-down
Posted by: Angus Files | July 29, 2011 at 10:09 AM
Thanks for the clarification, ChildHealthSafety. I revised the sentence on the origin of the work to clarify an ambiguity. Of course the team at the RFH did a great deal of work that was above and beyond what parents had observed.
As for the trio of symptoms, I did not suggest all three were coupled in every case. Your statements of fact are correct and consistent with what I wrote.
My larger point here remains, which is that Wakefield and the RFH team accurately reported parental observations that have never changed and are consistent with parental observations all over the world. Deer's attack on Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free is a proxy attack by the British Medical Association on parents.
Posted by: Mark Blaxill | July 29, 2011 at 09:40 AM
Further clarification.
The 1998 Lancet paper was not reporting "parental observations of varying forms of regressive autism or encephalitis, inflammatory bowel disease and a temporal association between exposure to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) and the onset of symptoms".
The histories of parental observations formed just one part of detailed clinical investigations of the children carried out by the 12 expert Royal Free Hospital medical specialist clinicians.
The paper did report that for 8 children, the parents [and in some cases the child's family doctor - as shown by the GMC transcripts] associated the onset of symptoms with the administration of the MMR vaccine. However, the paper was an "early report" and it called for further investigation rather than claiming the was a link.
The association between vaccines generally [not just MMR] and autistic conditions was confirmed on US broadcast news by Head of US CDC Julie Gerberding and the US HRSA. This followed the breaking of the Hannah Poling story by journalist David Kirby. Hannah developed an autistic condition after 9 vaccines in 1 day. The US government secretly conceded the case. Other cases of vaccine caused autism have been either conceded by the US government or upheld in the US Federal Court.
Details can be found here:
"Vaccination Causes Autism – Say US Government & Merck’s Director of Vaccines"
http://tinyurl.com/26kju9m
Posted by: ChildHealthSafety | July 29, 2011 at 08:02 AM
Good morning, Mandy. We have a category called Dr. Andrew Wakefield - I suggest you click into it for a wealth of reports about the LANCET paper. Also, click JOHN STONE under contributors. Also, I suggest you read Dr. Wakefield's book Callous Disregard for his POV to round out the research. Thanks for commenting. Kim, Managing Editor
Posted by: Managing Editor for Mandy | July 29, 2011 at 07:54 AM
Do you have articles or other support that the information came from parents? All I can find is information about how, instead of listening to the parents involved in his study, Wakefield actually skewed their reports and dating to support his own theory. The only interviews of parents I can find also say their information was manipulated. If you have interviews or reliable accounts about those parents and the information about their kids, I would love to have it for some support literature I am working on for our schools. Thanks for your help!
Posted by: Mandy Guyton | July 29, 2011 at 07:45 AM
Clarification is needed to the sentence "Rather, Wakefield merely collected and reported on observations originally made by parents".
Andrew Wakefield did not originate the data reported in the Lancet paper.
The 1998 Lancet paper was drafted by Andrew Wakefield but reported the findings of the 12 expert specialist Royal Free Hospital clinicians. The various versions were circulated to the other 12 authors for comment, amendment and approval.
The children's histories were taken [collected and reported on] by Professor John Walker-Smith.
To allege fraud requires a comparison between the information originated by the clinicians and what the Lancet paper says.
Deer and the BMJ did not do that.
They also changed what the paper was reporting to fit what they wanted it to say to allege fraud.
They cherry-picked information from family doctor records and the GMC hearings to allege there were discrepancies.
The Lancet paper explicitly reports on “12 children ... with a history of normal development followed by loss of acquired skills, including language, together with diarrhoea and abdominal pain”.
Deer and the BMJ changed this to reporting 12 children 1) with autism, who regressed, 2) had "non-specific colitis" and 3) whose symptoms of autism were first indicated within 14 days of the MMR vaccine.
But the Lancet paper was not reporting that. So what Deer and the BMJ did was to 1) select data 2) which would not match what they claimed the Lancet paper reported.
For example, 1) only 9 of the 12 were diagnosed with an autistic condition 2) most had non specific colitis but not all 3) most regressed but the first indications of a behavioural change were not documented for all so the paper could clearly not report first signs of behavioural changes occurring within 14 days.
BMJ/Deer also did not have important information, such as the bowel conditions of the 12 children carried out within the Royal Free by the clinicians - not Wakefield, showing most diagnosed with non specific colitis.
Nor did they have the "Personal Child Health Records" documenting whether a child is developing within the "normal range" of development or not.
These aspects of information which were not available in the GMC proceedings are covered in the GMC transcripts but Deer and BMJ seem to have "overlooked" them.
Posted by: ChildHealthSafety | July 29, 2011 at 07:39 AM
I would remind readers that the Conflict of Interest correction was no ordinary matter....it involved the three senior editors of the BMJ and it was just not a single article or editorial but I believe three editorials in total.
It should have gone further, a clear statement should have been made in the next available journal to follow and it should have been presented on the home page of the online edition.
That they tried to minimise their very serious error by some circumspect reasoning 'we did not think to" was the approximate phrase, shows that editorial diligence and forethought was lacking.
This alone should have been enough to retract the journal articles ... that was their contention with Andrew Wakefield.
Couple that with witness and institutional conflicts of interest not revealed or elaborated to the general public and the possible ethical breaches of patient confidentiality then one wonders how this still remains in the public arena.
I'm sure there will be more to come in this unfortunate 'tragedy' one has the feeling that links to todays headlines are not far off...
Posted by: Autism Watcher | July 29, 2011 at 07:36 AM