Andrew Wakefield - The Skeptic's Dictionary (original) (raw)
After the GMC's initial ruling was announced, Dr. Shona Hilton of the Medical Research Council said the MMR scare had undermined parents' trust in the MMR vaccination. "Thankfully confidence is returning and the uptake of MMR vaccine is increasing," she said. "We need to continue rebuilding trust with parents that MMR vaccination is safe and ensure that those parents caring for children with autism do not blame themselves."* Also, one should not forget that thanks to the vaccine scare, parents of children of autism now have one more thing to dread: that their child will contract some preventable disease because other parents are afraid to have their children vaccinated.
the role of the media in the scare
How could a blatantly flawed study (forget the fraud) have such a powerful effect? Dr. Ben Goldacre thinks he knows:
...in MMR, journalists and editors have constructed their greatest hoax to date, and finally demonstrated that they can pose a serious risk to public health. But there are also many unexpected twists to learn from: the health journalists themselves were not at fault, the scale of the bias in the coverage was greater than anybody realised at the time, Leo Blair was a bigger player than Wakefield, and it all happened much later than you think.
Goldacre argues that different countries have different anti-vaccination concerns. The diversity of anti-vaccination panics illustrates how they reflect "local political and social concerns more than a genuine appraisal of the risk data." When Wakefield began pushing his claims in 2001 and 2002, he was arguing that his work on tissue samples showed that children with bowel problems and autism had the measles virus. He got "blanket media coverage" in which "emotive anecdotes from distressed parents were pitted against old men in corduroy with no media training."
The Royal College of General Practitioners press office not only failed to speak clearly on the evidence, it also managed to dig up anti-MMR GPs for journalists who rang in asking for quotes. Newspapers and celebrities began to use the vaccine as an opportunity to attack the government and the health service, and of course it was the perfect story, with a charismatic maverick fighting against the system....
The prime minister and his wife, Tony and Cherie Blair, were asked by journalists if their son Leo had been vaccinated. The Blairs refused to say, thereby giving up an opportunity to set the record straight for the general public about the safety and necessity of childhood vaccinations. Their silence was not golden, nor was it seen as a proper response of a public couple trying to protect the privacy of their children. Rather, the Blair's refusal to say whether their son had been vaccinated was taken by some to mean that maybe this Wakefield guy was right. Then there was the fact that Cherie Blair wore crystals to keep evil rays from harming her. Her best friend's mother, Sylvia Caplin, was "a spiritual guru who was viciously anti-MMR ('for a tiny child, the MMR is a ridiculous thing to do. It has definitely caused autism,' she told the Mail)." The Blairs were also associated with new age healer Jack Temple, "who offered crystal dowsing, homeopathy, neolithic-circle healing in his suburban back garden, and some special breastfeeding technique which he reckoned made vaccines unnecessary."
In 2003 the Economic and Social Research Council published a paper on the media’s role in the public understanding of science, which sampled all the major science media stories from January to September 2002, the peak of the scare. It found 32% of all the stories written in that period about MMR mentioned Leo Blair, and Wakefield was only mentioned in 25%: Leo Blair was a bigger figure in this story than Wakefield.
According to Goldacre, the UK media "distorted the scientific evidence, reporting selectively on the evidence suggesting that MMR was risky, and repeatedly ignoring the evidence to the contrary."
celebrities contribute to the scare in the U.S.
In the U.S., things were even messier because of the claim repeatedly made in the media by parents, celebrities like Jenny McCarthy (given a bully pulpit by Oprah Winfrey), and famous names like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the MMR vaccine was the cause of autism. After thimerosal was removed from vaccines, the focus shifted from mercury poisoning to the quantity of jabs children receive or the the speculation that some children, impossible to identify before vaccinations are given, are "especially sensitive" to vaccines.
Some people think that the immune systems of children are being weakened by vaccines, making them vulnerable to illnesses later on in life. Quackwatch calls this misconception #7. For example, some think that their child's asthma or respiratory problems may be due to "vaccine overload" on their immature immune systems.
In fact babies have an ability, right from birth, to cope with lots of different germs. The body is constantly surrounded by germs and has to react to them in different ways. The advantage of being immunized rather than catching the disease is that the vaccine uses only part of the germ, or, if the whole germ, it is either killed or toned down (“attenuated”). In this way, the challenge to the immune system is less than that from the disease, but it is enough to produce protection.
In 2002, the Immunization Safety Review Committee of the American Institute of Medicine made a detailed examination of all the evidence about the effects of multiple immunizations on a baby’s immune system. They concluded that there was no evidence to support the suggestion that multiple immunizations overwhelm the immune system. They strongly supported the continuing use of vaccines against multiple diseases....
If immunizations are delayed, a baby will remain unprotected for longer than necessary. This could be particularly dangerous for whooping cough and Hib. Very young babies, if they catch whooping cough, are likely to be much more seriously ill than older children and are more likely to need hospital care. Babies under a year old are more likely to catch Hib than older children Studies have shown that when the vaccines are given at the younger age, babies have fewer reactions such as fever, sore injection sites etc, while at the same time they are still protected.*
There have been many well-designed studies that have examined claims that vaccines cause chronic diseases such as asthma, multiple sclerosis, chronic arthritis, sudden infant death syndrome, and diabetes. The studies have not found compelling evidence for any such links.*
the media & politicians in the U.S. scare
Journalists are rarely medically trained and the common practice is pseudosymmetry: to present minority and contrarian positions as if they are equal to consensus views backed by an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence. This practice is defended as a matter of fairness, though it is probably more a matter of ignorance, laziness, or a desire to be popular by not offending the majority. After all, you never read of a journalist presenting the "other side" of gravity or feeling obligated to report on the accused child molester's point of view.
U.S. politicians, most of whom weren't following the thimerosal debacle, generally played it safe when asked about it. In America, politicians never say: "I don't know; I haven't studied that issue." When in doubt most invoke the precautionary principle, which generally leaves the public with the feeling that maybe there is something to worry about here. Senator John Kerry is a prime example. In 2006, he told media host Don Imus an anecdote he heard from a UPS driver about how the driver's child, a twin, got autism after getting vaccinated, while the other twin didn't get vaccinated and didn't get autism. The driver blames thimerosal and Kerry says "yet, we still have mercury in vaccinations around the country. It's absurd. I don't get it. We ought to stop...." Imus asserts that "we know that thimerosal is a neurotoxin, and that it's ethyl mercury, and it's 50 times stronger than the mercury we'd find in fish...." The mercury in fish is methylmercury and is usually given in terms of parts per million, so it is hard to compare the two. At the time Kerry and Imus were making their scary claims, however, thimerosal had been absent from most vaccines for five years, but people were still eating fish.*
In the U.S., an even more popular tactic with politicians is to justify backing off an issue because it is before the courts. There were so many cases (about 5,000) before the courts involving parents blaming vaccines for autism in their children that a special federal court with "special masters" (judges) was created to hear them. In 2007, the first test case was decided. The special master ruled in favor of the parents, even though the child had never been diagnosed with autism. In February 2009, however, the court ruled on another test case and asserted that vaccines do not cause autism. The special masters, it seems, looked at the evidence. The totality of the evidence points to the conclusion that Wakefield and the parents' groups blaming vaccines for autism were wrong. Wakefield, journalists, celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, and politicians who continue to blame vaccines for autism are misleading many parents. Those parents in turn may be doing irreparable harm to those they love the most by following the advice of people who systematically ignore the clear implications of the sum of the evidence.
See also anti-vaccination movement, Wakefield Warriors, Rights and Vaccines, andThe Wakefield Propaganda Machine.
further reading
The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield: A fifteen page story in comic book form about the MMR vaccination controversy
All posts on autism and thimerosal in vaccines
books and articles
Fitzpatrick, Michael. (2004). MMR and Autism. Routledge. (A Kindle edition is also available. For more on Kindle click here.)
Judelsohn, Richard G. (2007). "Vaccine Safety: Vaccines Are One of Public Health's Great Accomplishments." Skeptical Inquirer. November/December.
Norman, Matthew and Jesse Dallery. (2007). "Mercury Rising: Exploring the Vaccine-Autism Myth." Skeptic. vol. 13 num 3.
Novella, Steven. (2007). "The Anti-Vaccination Movement." Skeptical Inquirer. November/December.
websites
The MMR-autism crisis - our story so far - An investigation by Brian Deer
CDC Studies on Vaccines and Autism Spectrum Disorders
Ten Myths about Autism - Debunked
"The Anti-Vaccination Movement" by Steven Novella
Panel Finds No Evidence to Tie Autism to Vaccines by Sandra Blakeslee, NY Times, May 19, 2004
Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s completely dishonest thimerosal article
blogs
Andrew Wakefield Fights Back by Harriet Hall His career was in shreds and there was only one way left for him to fight back: to write a book. Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines — The Truth Behind a Tragedy has just been published....In my opinion the book does nothing to scientifically validate his beliefs or to excuse his behavior, but rather boils down to self-serving apologetics and misleading rhetoric. It also undermines his claim that he is a good scientist by showing that he values anecdotal evidence (“listening to the parents”) over experimental evidence.
Antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield: Scientific fraud?
news
25 April 2011.For his outstanding perseverance, stamina and revelation on a story of major importance, Brian Deer was awarded Specialist Journalist of the Year at The Press Awards. His tireless investigation into Andrew Wakefield’s claim of the supposed link between autism and the MMR vaccine culminated in January 2010, when Wakefield was found guilty of misconduct by the General Medical Council and struck off as a doctor. It was ‘a tremendous righting of a wrong.’
3 Feb 2011. The real lessons of the MMR debacle by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick It is unfortunate that [journalist Brian] Deer has allowed himself to be dragged into the disputatious mire into which this sorry saga has festered for many years. He was, for example, ill-advised in getting drawn into a slanging match with parent campaigners in the course of the GMC hearings. He has also made ill-judged criticisms of others who have been involved in challenging the campaign against MMR – including US paediatrician Paul Offit, Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre, and, heaven forbid, myself....We must, however, allow Deer some slack in all this. He has been much abused by the pro-Wakefield lobby, and it is unsurprising that he feels more than a little beleaguered. He has done a marvellously tenacious job in digging out the damning detail of the case when other journalists were looking the other way. The medical, scientific and wider community have now a full account from which to draw their own conclusions.
6 Jan 2011. The British Medical Journal calls the Wakefield study that started the vaccine/autism scare "fraudulent." In a series of articles starting this week, seven years after first looking into the MMR scare, journalist Brian Deer shows the extent of Wakefield’s fraud and how it was perpetrated.
3 June 2010. Another published paper by the disgraced Wakefield et al. has been retracted, this time by the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
On 28 January 2010, the UK General Medical Council's Fitness to Practice Panel raised concerns about a paper published in the Lancet by Dr Wakefield et al. The main issues were that the patient sample collected was likely to be biased and that the statement in the paper, that the study had local ethics committee approval, was false. There was also the possibility of a serious conflict of interest in the interpretation of the data. The Lancet has now retracted this paper. This paper in the American Journal of Gastroenterology (AJG) also includes the 12 patients in the original Lancet article and therefore we retract this AJG paper from the public record.
23 May 2010. Weeping wounds of the MMR scare: Tomorrow the doctor who started a panic may be struck off, but for some the pain will never end Tomorrow ... Andrew Wakefield — known as “the MMR doctor” — is likely to be struck off the medical register for what the five-member tribunal [of the General Medical Council] has already labelled “dishonest”, “unethical” and “callous” research.
In withdrawing his licence to practise, the council will be laying to rest a huge scare that spread rapidly among parents, causing a massive slump in the number of children who were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella in Britain. Two children subsequently died of measles and many others became seriously ill.
MMR row doctor Andrew Wakefield struck off register Andrew Wakefield, the doctor at the centre of the MMR scare, has been struck off the medical register after being found guilty of serious professional misconduct. He was not at the General Medical Council (GMC) hearing to receive the verdict on his role in a public health debacle which saw vaccination of young children against measles, mumps and rubella plummet. The GMC said he acted in a way that was dishonest, misleading and irresponsible while carrying out research into a possible link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, bowel disease and autism.
He had "abused his position of trust" and "brought the medical profession into disrepute" in studies he carried out on children. The GMC said there had been "multiple separate instances of serious professional misconduct".
further reading
A staggeringly weak interview of Andrew Wakefield on the Today programme by Ben Goldacre
The Wakefield MMR Verdict by Ben Goldacre
Dr Andrew Wakefield struck off medical register The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said that the false suggestion of a link between autism and the MMR vaccine had done “untold damage to the UK vaccination programme”.
“We cannot stress too strongly that all children and young people should have the MMR vaccine. Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that it is safe,” it said.
A Department of Health spokesperson added: “The GMC has given its conclusions on Dr Wakefield’s fitness to practice. The safety of MMR has been endorsed through numerous studies in many countries. Thankfully, more parents are having their children vaccinated with MMR and they see it as being as safe as other childhood vaccines.” (TimesOnline)
4 May 2010. In a major fit of hubris and rationalization, Andrew Wakefield has written a book that he describes as "dispatches from the battlefront in a major confrontation—a struggle against compromise in medicine, corruption of science, and a real and present threat to children in the interests of policy and profit. It is a story of how ‘the system’ deals with dissent among its doctors and scientists."
The true story is quite different. Wakefield is the one who has compromised medicine, corrupted science, and posed a major threat to the health of children and others around the world, all for money and fame. Over the years since his 1998 report on finding a link between the MMR vaccine, autism, and bowel disease in children—a study of 12 children that used no controls—Wakefield has apparently deceived himself into believing he is a pioneer scientist besieged by enemies as he works to "help" children with autism.
The 'system' allowed him to push his phony agenda on the slimmest thread of evidence for many years until he was finally brought before a medical board for his unethical practices. He didn't lose his jobs because of his scientific pursuits; he lost his jobs because of his unethical behavior. Wakefield says he was maligned when a recent General Medical Council ruling stated he was "dishonest, irresponsible and showed callous disregard for the distress and pain of children." The evidence indicates that the GMC's opinion is justified.
Wakefield also claims that the media has maligned him, even though it was the media that gave him a bully pulpit to pursue his own economic and personal interests on the basis of a tiny study that was never replicated with proper numbers, controls, or randomization.
Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines—The Truth
Behind a Tragedy is a desperate attempt by the callous Wakefield to continue the charade that he is the protector of children at war with mighty self-interested forces that keep producing all this scientific evidence that vaccines are not the cause of autism, evidence he and his followers choose to disregard.
To provide authenticity, the book has a foreword by Playmate turned pseudoscientist Jenny McCarthy.
A detailed and thorough review of every claim made in Wakefield's book about vaccinations concludes: "I have shown that every major claim Wakefield makes in his book concerning vaccine safety is wrong." See "Wrong About Vaccine Safety: A Review of Andrew Wakefield’s “Callous Disregard”" by Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH in The Open Vaccine Journal, Vol 6, 2013, pp 9 – 25.
Wakefield’s "autistic enterocolitis" under the microscope by Brian Deer, journalist, British Medical Journal Two years before the paper was published he was hired by a solicitor to help launch a speculative lawsuit against drug companies that manufactured MMR vaccine. And the instrument of their attack was to find what he called at the time "a new syndrome" of bowel and brain disease caused by vaccines. More evidence of Wakefield's incompetence or fraud. Commentary: We came to an overwhelming and uniform opinion that these reports do not show colitis There are no grounds to believe that any new inflammatory bowel disease was discovered by Wakefield et al. by Ingvar Bjarnason professor of digestive diseases, consultant physician and gastroenterologist King’s College Hospital, London SE5 9RS, UK
Wakefield's Lancet paper retracted On 2 Feb 2010 the editors of Lancet posted the following notice online: "Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al1 are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.2 In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.
12 Feb 2010. Another paper co-authored by Andrew Wakefield has been withdrawn, this time by Neurotoxicology.
MMR scare doctor 'acted unethically', panel finds Dr. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 Lancet study caused vaccination rates to plummet, resulting in a rise in measles - but the findings were later discredited.
Doctor in MMR-Autism Scare Ruled Unethical Wakefield's study has since been discredited, and the MMR vaccine deemed to be safe....Vaccination rates among toddlers plummeted from over 90% in the mid-1990s to below 70% in some places by 2003. Following this drop, Britain saw an increase in measles cases at a time when the disease had been all but eradicated in many developed countries. In 1998, there were just 56 cases of the disease in England and Wales; by 2008 there were 1,370.
Andrew Wakefield found 'irresponsible' by GMC over MMR vaccine scare Branding him a dishonest, irresponsible doctor, the GMC disciplinary panel, which has sat and heard evidence for 148 days over two and a half years, finally found a long array of charges against him proven. But there were shouts of protest and dismay from the doctor's supporters.
Last updated 28-Mar-2016