Autism-MMR Fraud: Wakefield exposed

[tellner]

There is only one unforgiveable sin in science: Fraud

Andrew Wakefield rode to fame and influence on the strength of studies claiming to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. He has been caught out falsifying the evidence on his original work that helped fuel the anti-MMR scare which in turn fed into the old and long-discredited anti-vaccination hysteria. Wakefield's crimes have led to lowered vaccination rates and a return of measels and mumps.

Nobel Prize winners have had their careers destroyed for insufficiently supervising underlings who altered data on the sly. Faking whole studies is far beyond the borders of acceptable behavior. Wakefield will, of course, never work again in any legitimate scientific capacity and may be subject to criminal and civil penalties. It is only a shame that he will not be forced to pay the price for the lives he has damaged or ended through discouraging people from receiving this basic public health measure.

I would utter the traditional terrible Jewish curse "May his name and memory be erased" but that would not be sufficient. His crimes against his fellow man and against the practice of science must be remembered so that others will not be so quick to repeat them.

 

[exile]

I'm not at all sure the word loathsome is strong enough for this guy... actually, I'm pretty sure it isn't.

He bears virtually certain responsibility for deaths and unnecessary chronic illness. Most repugnant of all is the strong suggestion, in the first Times piece, that his motives may well have included ramping up his income by serving as a scientific expert witness in high-stakes litigation involving class actions by families of the supposed victims of MMR injections.

Language just doesn't have the resources to fairly describe this bastard's vileness.

 

[tellner]

Most repugnant of all is the strong suggestion, in the first Times piece, that his motives may well have included ramping up his income by serving as a scientific expert witness in high-stakes litigation

At one time a man who committed treason for gold or silver had his fee melted and was forced to drink it. It may be time to revive that custom.

 

[Makalakumu]

While it is good to uncover fraud of this nature, because it keeps the institution honest, let us not forget the political side of this equation. The BigPharma Lobby will make sure this case get paraded around and they will use it as a bludgeon against anyone who claims that this or that product may not be safe. The fact that Wakefield was exposed should diminish person's over all level of skepticism when it comes to the drug industry. If we are going pull out our knives and carve up Wakefield, you better be ready to carve up a much bigger beast because I suspect this little candle of shame ain't nothing compared the bonfire burning over yonder.

 

[tellner]

When they're exposed they make the news as in Vioxx, the Dalkon shield and the Swedish Hospital fraud in Seattle a few years back. I have no love for the pharmaceutical industry, but their sins do not diminish what this guy has done. And the fact that Merck or Pfizer is evil does not mean that vaccination is not an extremely effective public health measure or that diuretics don't make you pee.

 

[bluekey88]

Not only the children who have suffered because they didn't get vaccinations...but how about all the resources that went towards dealign with the so-called MMR-autism link that could have better been spent on therapi3es that work. As a professional in the autsim field I have a very low tolerance for the amount of money and time wasted due to specious treatments (facilitated communication anyone?)

Peace,
Erik

 

[tellner]

This article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette raises an interesting possibility. Some of the increase in autism may simply be classification. Instead of being labelled "mentally retarded" children are being diagnosed as autistic.

But there are now intriguing indications that most if not all of the autism increase is the result of broadening the criteria for the diagnosis and identifying children with autism who would have been labeled with a different diagnosis in the past.

A 2006 study in the journal Pediatrics found, for instance, that the national increase in identified autism cases in elementary schoolchildren between 1984 and 2003 had been paralleled by a similar decrease in the number of children labeled as retarded or learning disabled.

...

In an interview this week, Dr. Shattuck said that because of changes in the definition of autism and how it is measured, it is impossible to know how much it may have increased from past years.

But his study certainly suggests that "diagnostic substitution" -- labeling someone as autistic today who would have been labeled as retarded 30 years ago -- is a substantial part of the picture.

Dr. Shattuck's study isn't the only one showing this trend.

 

[Makalakumu]

When they're exposed they make the news as in Vioxx, the Dalkon shield and the Swedish Hospital fraud in Seattle a few years back. I have no love for the pharmaceutical industry, but their sins do not diminish what this guy has done. And the fact that Merck or Pfizer is evil does not mean that vaccination is not an extremely effective public health measure or that diuretics don't make you pee.

While this may be true, to an extent, I think it would be foolish to forget how easily the scientific enterprise is eroded by industrial pressure. I think we've gotten to the point where the entire enterprise itself is questionable. When you stop to consider the games that were played by big tobacco with cigarettes, the mental contortions polluters make when it comes to dioxin and other chemicals, the fraud that has already been exposed in the drug industry, and the fact that the people run the FDA are industry insiders who leave and go back to work for the industry they had to police, how can't you look any of these so-called "studies" without a high degree of skepticism?

If what is being said about Wakefield is true, then he can rot in prison somewhere. On the other hand, I'd be very careful about pointing at this a gigantic victory for public health. I would say that there are probably some big fish to fry in that department and the veracity of the claims about Wakefield should do nothing to diminish a person's skepticism regarding pharmaceuticals. MMR vaccines may really be safe, but that doesn't mean that ALL other vaccines may also be safe.

Keep your guard up. That's all I'm saying.

 

[arnisador]

Falsifying evidence is bad enough. Where medical matters are concerned, it should be criminal.

 

[shesulsa]

I don't really see anything in the articles which specifically outlines the actual act of fraud other than a discrepancy in hospital reports and his findings. This is nothing new in the medical field.

My son never received the MMR vaccine, he received the DPT and live polio oral vaccine. His reaction was immediate.

I know other parents who have children with celiac disease whose ped gastros have told them that most tests for intestinal disorders are barely reliable unless the inflammation is present AT THE MOMENT OF BIOPSY - this is excessively hard to achieve as it is rare for a ped gastro to OK the procedure on a child writhing in pain, vomiting and medically unstable. Apparently that applies to just about anything going on in the gut except for that which causes tissue death, scar tissue and other more evidentiary exhibitions.

In the Wakefield case, it is my understanding that he is the only physician who has conducted these tests without the involvement of big pharma. His results are the only ones obtained from a doctor who is NOT at the beck-and-call of vaccination manufacturers specifically.

If Wakefield's results did nothing other than wake the world up to educating ourselves on our medical care and the nature of how medications, vaccinations and immunity works, then so be it.

And then, of course, there is Big Medicine and then there is the patient. Whenever I'm asked if my oldest has an up-to-date immunization record I state, "No, he is vaccine-injured." I always get questioned and it is NEVER placed on his medical record that he is injured because of vaccination - they state he had a reaction to the vaccine.

I can't GET an immuno-specialist to analyze him. No one wants to TOUCH him. You see ... his genetic immunology displays an anomoly ... there is NO WAY that his genetic immunology could result from the mix of mine and his fathers (OHSU autism-immunology study circa 1996) without an outside incident that alters DNA. He has not had chemotherapy, he has not had any tissue transplant, he has only ever had vaccinations - DNA altering vaccinations.

I BELIEVE IN SAFE VACCINATION. SOMEONE STUDY MY KID, PLEASE.

No takers?

Ah well ... moving on then.

 

[Carol]

One of the articles suggest$ a motivation - Wakefield got about a million bucks, plus additional research money, to work for an attorney trying to make a case against MMR.

Doesn't prove fraud per se, but that is one helluva conflict of interest. And if the patients were truly hand picked for the study...

Further questions arise about the motivations of Wakefield. Five years ago this month, The Sunday Times reported that he worked for lawyers, and that many of the families were either litigants or were part of networks through which they would sue. Far from routine referrals, as they appeared, many of them had made contact with one another.


Child Six and Child Seven were brothers from East Sussex; Child Four, a 9½-year-old from North Shields, Tyneside, was registered with the same GP as Child Eight. In short, the 12, none of whom came from London, fetched up far-from-routinely at the hospital.


The mothers of Child Two and Child Three told me what others said in medical records: they had heard of Wakefield through the MMR vaccine campaign, Jabs. Thus, when they arrived on Malcolm ward, and produced the “finding” about MMR, it was by no means a random sample of cases.
What parents did not know was that, two years before, Wakefield had been hired by Jabs’s lawyer, Richard Barr, a high-street solicitor in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. Barr had obtained legal aid to probe MMR for any evidence that could be used against the manufacturers. He is adamant that at all times he acted professionally, and diligently represented his clients.
A string of Sunday Times reports have exposed how Wakefield earned £435,643 through his work with Barr, plus funding to support his research.

 

[shesulsa]

One of the articles suggest$ a motivation - Wakefield got about a million bucks, plus additional research money, to work for an attorney trying to make a case against MMR.

My caffeine-depleted eyes didn't see that. Thank you.

Doesn't prove fraud per se, but that is one helluva conflict of interest. And if the patients were truly hand picked for the study...

Yeah, I heard he used his very own patients.... Not great, but there is still another side to the story.

Thanks, Carol. :asian:

 

[tellner]

I'm afraid not, Shesulsa. Take a closer look:

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

and if you read the second article it becomes clearer. The test results he claimed were not there. The diagnoses were altered. His claims were at odds with the actual files, the pathology tests and independent tests.

He falsified his research. It's as simple as that. There is no "other side". He's a liar. He's a fraud. No matter how much you want his conclusions to be true you have to throw them out if you have a shred of honesty.

I'm really sorry to put it this way, and I in no way want to minimize what you have gone through. He lied. You can't believe what he said. And the fact that none of his results can be replicated means that you will have to abandon the hypothesis in which you put so much hope.

 

[Makalakumu]

Tellner, her son didn't get the MMR. He got the DPT and live Polio as she said. Does the fact that Wakefield may be a fraud somehow make these other vaccines safe?

This is exactly the point I have been trying to make. DO NOT assume that other pharmaceuticals are safe because one person may have faked his research.

Keep your guard up.

 

[Empty Hands]

DNA altering vaccinations.

They don't work that way, unless you are suggesting that some sort of mutagenic chemical was present in the cocktail.