If you're reading this, you probably read another DK diary on autism and Dr. Wakefield.
Did you know that Dr. Wakefield is pro-vaccination?
To judge by the comments in that diary, you'd think that Dr. Wakefield is anti-science and a self-promoter, both of which are untrue.
As best I can tell, Dr. Wakefield is the victim of a McCarthy-ist witch hunt by big pharma.
But please decide for yourself. You can click through to an interview with Dr. Wakefield and see what he says:
http://mercola.fileburst.com/...
Hey, I'm not saying Wakefield is right. I am saying there's another side of the story, and the other diary isn't presenting it.
If you've clicked here, you've probably read the diary on Dr. Wakefield and autism.
Did you know that Dr. Wakefield is pro-vaccination?
To judge by the comments in that diary, you'd think that Dr. Wakefield is anti-science and a self-promoter, both of which are untrue.
As best I can tell, Dr. Wakefield is the victim of a McCarthy-ist witch hunt by big pharma.
But please decide for yourself. You can click through to an interview with Dr. Wakefield and see what he says:
http://mercola.fileburst.com/...
Hey, I'm not saying Wakefield is right. I am saying there's another side of the story, and the other diary isn't presenting it.
DW is Wakefield; DM is the interviewer
Here are a couple of highlights:
DW: Well then what happened is we went on and saw more children, published more papers. We published a total of about 19 papers on this disorder in total.
DM: And they were all in peer-reviewed scientific literature?
DW: All peer reviewed. Strangely, these have never been discussed when it comes down to the public relations exercise of the other side to discredit the only paper that is discussed is that Lancet paper.
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What had happened when the MMR was introduced in the UK is that somehow the Department of Health or the government had done a deal with the manufacturers of one of the vaccines, SmithKline Beecham to indemnify them against litigation.
Now, why would they do that? What was the purpose of that?
Well, it turns out, that the vaccine that they had at the time contained a strain of the mumps virus, Urabe AM9, which was dangerous. It caused meningitis.
It was first introduced, it was produced in Japan. It was introduced into Canada and very quickly in Canada, when it came into use as MMR; they found that it caused meningitis. Rapidly after that, it was withdrawn.
It was then withdrawn in Canada and it was still introduced in the UK, and it‟s my opinion that SmithKline Beecham did not want to introduce it because they knew of these problems. They had a potential liability, a real liability. And the government therefore, in order to give the contract to the home team, to a British company, indemnified them.
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Good, and particularly where you‟ve got a brand of the vaccine where there have already been problems.
So the vaccine with this dangerous Urabe AM9 strain came in the UK and lo and behold, it had to be withdrawn four years later overnight because it was causing meningitis.
It was causing the complication that had been seen in Canada; that had been seen in Japan and had been seen in Australia. And the vaccine was withdrawn.
Was it taken off the market? No.
What happened to it next?
It was put into storage and then it was sent to Third World countries like Brazil to be used in mass vaccination campaigns. So here you have a vaccine that has been taken away from different countries, First World countries but has not been discarded and is then sold on to Brazil.
What happens when they do a mass vaccination campaign in Brazil?
They have an outbreak, an epidemic of meningitis.
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DW: Well, that was the beginning of the media attention. In 2004, I suddenly got this contact from a freelance journalist Brian Deer working on behalf of the Sunday Times making a whole series of allegations against my colleagues and I.
In his opinion, these children did not need investigation, in his opinion, these children did not need a colonoscopy or a lumbar puncture or these other investigations that my clinical colleagues had deemed, they most certainly did need.
DM: And he had no formal medical training.
DW: None at all.
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DM: He‟s just a journalist.
DW: None at all but it was his opinion. He believed that I had got together with a lawyer, had rounded up these children for the purpose of creating a legal case against the manufacturers of the vaccine in order to bring about the downfall of the vaccine in order to launch my own vaccine onto the market. It was a great story.
DM: If he had done his homework, he would have found that it was impossible because the manufacturers were indemnified.
DW: Well, it was just so fanciful. Where do you start to unpick a story like that?
But the bizarre thing is that what mutated from that original story none of which really made any sense.
The children were not involved in litigation when they were referred to the Royal Free. They were nothing to do with litigation until afterwards. They were not herded, rounded up by lawyers. They didn‟t come from lawyers.
These were parents who heard about the work or read about the work or had been talking to friends at child groups who made spontaneous contact with me because in the newspapers they had seen the work on Crohn‟s disease. That‟s how they came.
So he made so many factual errors but he nonetheless managed to persuade the General Medical Council to initiate a process of investigation against us.
And by that stage, this had become such a political hot potato, the Minister of Health, that a number of people from the department had put their all in and decided this needed to be investigated but they construed this case against us. And we, that are my colleagues and I, had recently been found guilty of some of the most ludicrous charges.
For example, experimenting on children in the absence of ethical approval...
So they determined that the world‟s leading pediatric gastroenterologist was not fit to determine whether these children needed a colonoscopy or not for clinical indications. They determined it was researched.
DM: Was this a physician council that made that determination?
DW: There were three physicians and two lay members.