The Times: MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield ‘abused his position of trust’
The doctor who first claimed that the MMR vaccine could cause autism has been found guilty of a series of misconduct charges, that include putting children through painful and unnecessary tests, a disciplinary hearing has ruled today.
Dr Andrew Wakefield showed “a callous disregard” for the suffering of children and “abused his position of trust” as a doctor in carrying out a study which sparked the biggest vaccine scare in a generation and has been blamed for the resurgence of measles in Britain, the General Medical Council (GMC) found.
He was also found to have brought the medical profession “into disrepute” after he took blood samples from youngsters at his son’s birthday party in return for payments of £5 and failed to disclose vital conflicts of interest around his work – which has since been discredited.
Along with two former colleagues who were also involved in the study on 12 children, originally published in the Lancet medical journal in 1998, Dr Wakefield now faces being suspended or struck off the medical register if this verdict is confirmed by GMC later this year.
The findings from the 1998 Wakefield et al study on 12 children have failed to be replicated in subsequent studies involving millions of children. He failed to disclose conflicts of interest to the editors of The Lancet before his original paper was published in 1998 (he had received £55,000 before the study even began from lawyers representing parents wanting proof that the MMR had caused autism in their children, and had patented an alternative ‘single shot’ measles vaccine for his own personal gain). In the decade since the publication he received 8x his medical salary from fees as an “expert” provided through the UK legal aid system meant to assist people in poverty. The flagrant procedural flaws in the study (the children were not a random sample of cases from one hospital, the families had been specially recruited from already-existing anti-MMR activist groups, and their medical histories were manipulated and misrepresented) right from the off make its approval for publication by The Lancet‘s peer review system look none too clever either, although of course peer review is never proof against blatant fraud (that’s what subsequent replication-attempt studies tend to reveal).
The original Wakefield study is as debunked and discredited as it is possible for a piece of unethical cherry-picking “research” to be. Yet the article goes on to describe how supporters of Dr Wakefield attended the GMC hearings to heckle the chairman read out the panel’s verdicts and cheer as Wakefield addressed reporters afterwards. And in the comments to the Times article quoted above, he has people defending him on the basis that children can form contracts to sell their own blood if they want to! (Better yet, people with such a ridiculous misunderstanding of simple contract law want us to think that they understand the science better than everybody who has tried to replicate the Wakefield et al findings since 1998 without success).
This is the man whose pushing of the idea that autistic disorders have a discrete physical cause – the MMR jab – has led these parents to reject early-intervention cognitive behavioural therapies that are proven to improve communication and social skills for autistic children and instead turn to painful and useless physical treatments. When one touted cure doesn’t work they move on to ever more extreme treatments. The physical treatments that snake-oil sellers are persuading them to attempt are invasive, toxic, painful, dangerous and do not work. These people are torturing their children in the name of curing them, and often placing them on restrictive (and expensive! also inconvenient and socially even-more-isolating) diets that threaten their normal bodily development at the same time..
Also, while they accuse the medical establishment and Big Pharma and the government (and …) of failing to adequately test the MMR vaccine for harmful consequences before adding it to the standard vaccination regimen, they uncritically embrace treatments whose safety, let alone efficacy, has never been tested (having never even been submitted for proper medical evaluation).
“They really should be seeing treatment of patients with unproven therapies as dangerous experimentation,” said pediatrician Dr. Steven Goodman, a clinical trial expert at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. “The problem with uncontrolled experiments … is that it is experimentation from which we can learn nothing.”
Many parents who try alternative therapies cite an analogy [...] They say they feel as if their child has jumped off a pier. Science hasn’t proved that throwing a life preserver will save the child, but they have a duty to try, right?
Critics say that’s the wrong way to think about it.
“How do they know the life preserver is made of cork and not lead? That is the issue,” said Richard Mailman, a neuropharmacologist at Penn State University. “However desperate you are, you don’t want to throw your child a lead life preserver.” [Source]
Much of the language that anti-vax advocates use about their children with autism is also breathtakingly negative. They are describing their own children, in public and often with the child right there beside them, as “soulless” and emotionally/physically destructive creatures who have ruined their dreams of a normal family life, as children who have had their “real self” kidnapped by autism. It is hard not to feel immense pity for any child who hears this rejection of their personality as distorted, twisted and repulsive year after year, and what about how it affects other autistic-spectrum children with more empathetic parents, children who are shunned by the parents of their peers because they believe what these extremists say – that autistic children are at worst dangerous and at best so alien that their child could never enjoy or benefit from befriending them, so why bother?
In the bigger picture, now that people are fearful of vaccines due to the anti-vax scaremongering and are refusing to vaccinate their children, children all over the world are dying or left permanently disabled by diseases that a decade ago had been virtually suppressed by the herd immunity produced by general vaccination.
I understand how very much these parents want their children to not have the difficulties, especially the socialisation difficulties, that they face, and that they want to believe someone who tells them he has answers. I understand how very difficult it can be to parent a child with autism and the adjustments to expectations that have to be made, and how distressing this can be. I understand that they are heavily emotionally invested in finding someone to blame and finding a way to make their child’s life (and thus their own life) easier. But I can’t understand how they can be so willing to inflict pointless pain on their children in the name of doing so.
Disclosure: I have two children who have been diagnosed with communication/socialisation disorders on the Autistic Spectrum.
Crossposted
“…while they accuse the medical establishment and Big Pharma and the government (and …) of failing to adequately test the MMR vaccine for harmful consequences before adding it to the standard vaccination regimen, they uncritically embrace treatments whose safety, let alone efficacy, has never been tested…”
Great article tigtog.
Having worked as an allied health professional for many years with children with physical and intellectual disabilities, this thinking never ceased to amaze or confuse me. In one memorable encounter myself and another therapist threatened to resign over a particular “treatment” we were expected to work in conjunction with, that we felt was putting children at risk.
I do however understand a parents desire to do whatever they can to help their children.
(Source)
I work as a vaccine scientist and I’m often surprised about the number of questions I get from people in medical fields and even other scientists who are worried about vaccinating their kids. I guess parents often feel guilty about their kids getting two or three painful jabs at once, its probably tempting not to get them vaccinated.
In some ways the vaccine skepticism is the fault of vaccine researchers that we don’t get out and promote vaccine safety.
Thankfully rebutting anti-vaccine arguments are fairly easy. For example, vaccination is capable of eradicating (smallpox and polio in most countries). The other point is that for the vast majority of vaccines the side effects of the vaccine are far less damaging on the body than the actual disease.
If parents don’t want to get their young children vaccinated, they may be putting immuno-compromised children at school and day care at risk. Simply put, un-vaccinated children should not be allowed to enrol in public schools at the very least.
All that being said, a small number of people will be harmed by vaccine administration and we should have a national vaccination compensation pool for those who are damaged by vaccination.
I see nothing wrong with his paper at all and fully support his research.
Lord Monckton – Nobel Laureate
“..All that being said, a small number of people will be harmed by vaccine administration and we should have a national vaccination compensation pool for those who are damaged by vaccination…”
Who nellie, thats just sensible talk. Yup that would be a just way to handle it.
A straightforward telling of the risks, then compo for bad outcomes.
Yes, yes, yes, Tigtog.
“Thankfully rebutting anti-vaccine arguments are fairly easy.”
Assuming a rational discussion. Mostly, people do not have enough faith in themselves or knowledge of science to be able to decide on the facts, so they rely on experts. And its the choice of ‘expert’ opinion that leads people astray.
Many people are sadly happy to think that modern medicine is a corrupt authority (big pharma etc) and would rather rely on the friendly local naturopath for medical expertise they can trust.
If you have a twitter account, please vote for Dr Rachael Dunlop in the Shorty Award for health to counter the “alternative medicine” crackpots claiming validation from an award.
@”Lord Monkton”,
Seeing as how the UK inexplicably failed to take up your 1987 advice to quarantine everybody with AIDs, perhaps you can have more success in suggesting that they quarantine everybody on the autistic spectrum instead? or maybe just quarantine the climate scientists that you want to see sued for fraud?
P.S. I’m glad that you didn’t really have to sell your house to cover the Eternity Puzzle prize money, that your claim about this was just a publicity stunt, and that you weren’t in fact suffering any financial hardship because the game was in fact so very popular. Embroidering a story for commercial PR is just standard business practise these days, isn’t it? Who could blame you? It’s so hard for classics graduates with a history of failed newspaper editorships behind them to get a gig these days.
P.S. are you sure you posted this in the right thread?
The anti vaccination mob drive me insane. Generally I find them to be pretty ignorant people with little knowledge or experience of the developing world. Its oh so easy to be against vaccinating your kid when you live in Australia where most of the diseases have been controlled and where most people vaccinate their kid. These people bludge of the immunity of the herd. Their kids are safe because every one else vaccinates theirs. It is an incredibly selfish decision. I suggest they visit Bangladesh and see the effects of Polio. Their cause is disgusting and selfish and I would ask, if they were to travel to a country where disease still killed kids regularly would they vaccinate. One I knew sheepishly said Yes. Disgusting.
Wakefield should have been locked up years ago. The Sunday Times newspaper found out that he had patented his own measles vaccine before publishing his Lancet paper. Business is business…
The problem is that I’ve never met a rational anti-vaccer. So what do you do with them?
Chookie @ 11, with contempt.
Treat them with contempt, that is.
David Irving (no relation) @ 13, I don’t think contempt is the right approach to take with an upset mother who is absolutely convinced her autistic 5 year old developed the condition as a result of vaccination. I gather that a not insignificant proportion of parents of autistic children are now all in the antivax camp.
I don’t know what the correct response is to such parents, but contempt isn’t it.
@SCPritch,
Of course, many of them move out of the antivax camp again when a subsequent child whom they have NOT vaccinated is also identified as neurodiverse along the autistic spectrum. Then they start to look a bit more closely at their family tree.
SCPritch @ 14, I have one son who has been diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder (high-functioning, thank christ, but his childhood was difficult), and another who we’re all pretty sure is at least touched. I reckon I’ve got it too. Both of them were immunised with the triple antigen, which I believe is the supposed culprit. (I may have that wrong, but I don’t actually care much.) I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been, as I’m nearly 60.
I also reckon that my father and grandfather had Asperger’s Syndrome, and neither of them would have been immunised against anything as children.
Bullshit needs to be called and, if necessary, mocked.
great article TT
Excellent article Tigtog, but I can’t agree with Chumpai when he says, “Thankfully rebutting anti-vaccine arguments are fairly easy”
Sure its easy to rationally demolish the arguements. Convincing people is a different matter. I have a friend who has recently been diagnosed with a terrible disease. Before that, she had a vaccination shot against a different disease. And then she was contacted by someone who thinks there is a connection. She’s absolutely, immovably convinced on the point.
Now I’ll admit its entirely possible that this is right – that the vaccine does increase the risk of the condition she has. There seem to be non-cranks that think the connection may be genuine and are doing the appropriate research. But her response has been to promote every badly written article/wingnut suggesting a possible problem with the vaccine, even when they’ve either clearly got their facts wrong (one article was reporting on research that demolished a scare campaign, and claimed the research supported it) or they’re espousing politics she would normally despise. We’re totally programmed to believe Post hoc, ergo proctor hoc and find it very hard to shake.
Today’s long overdue news: The Lancet has officially retracted the original Wakefield paper.