UK: Wakefield/MMR - The Vaccine Road To the GMC

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Excellent summary

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The Vaccine Road To the GMC

NEW LABOUR, THE VACCINE SCANDAL

THE CHARACTER ASSASSINATION OF DR ANDREW WAKEFIELD

DEMONSTRATE MARCH 27TH

J

The fitness to practice case being heard at the

General Medical Council (GMC) against Dr

Wakefield and Professors Murch and -,

appears to involve an analysis of the scientific

research and clinical practice of these doctors.

However, almost all of the case and the attacks

that have taken place against Dr Wakefield since

the mid 1990s are politically inspired. They are

a part of the government’s drive to produce a

single multiple vaccine containing hundreds of

viral strains and also a key part of the

government’s co-ordinated policy for health care

that has been resolved in negotiation with the

pharmaceutical companies since New Labour came to

power in 1997. The following analysis of Dr

Wakefield’s ‘road to the GMC’ is divided into two

parts, political and scientific.

The Politics

The Introduction of MMR

In 1988 three brands of MMR were introduced into

the UK programme, two of which contained the

Urabe strain mumps virus. The brands containing

the Urabe mumps strain were withdrawn, in Canada,

Japan and eventually Britain after they had been

linked with aseptic meningitis and serious brain

damage. In Japan, the affected children and their

parents took their cases to court and were paid compensation.

The two brands of MMR were withdrawn from the UK

market in 1992 after the problem with Urabe was

acknowledged. Typically the Government of the

time pretended that the superior vigilance of

government agencies had brought the ‘slight’

problems to light and the government had then

acted with alacrity. In fact not only was the

government slow in responding to a public health

crisis but stocks of this withdrawn vaccine were

then made available and sold to less affluent

nations, eg Brazil. Since the withdrawal of the

Urabe strain MMR brands in the UK, the British

Government and the pharmaceutical companies have

refused to acknowledge any legal claims for

damages from either these or other MMR brands

despite claims from parents whose children showed

very similar presentations to the successful claimants in Japan.

At this time the British Government was left with

only one brand of MMR vaccine. Had they admitted

problems with this vaccine there would almost

certainly have been calls for a reversal of their

‘combination’ vaccine policy and a return to single vaccines.

Dr Wakefield

In the late 80s and the first years of the 1990s,

Dr Wakefield was a well respected academic

gastroenterologist researching Crohn’s disease.

He had already won acclaim for proving the

mechanism for Crohn’s. His work was well endowed with pharmaceutical grants.

In the mid-nineties, he began to be contacted by

parents who said that their children’s health

problems had been caused by the MMR or MR

(measles, rubella) vaccination who not only had

severe gut problems but also were exhibiting

behavioural problems – that later came to be perceived as ‘regressive autism’.

Dr Wakefield alerted the Department of Health to

what he considered to be a public health crisis,

and asked for a meeting with the health minister

and with the Head of Immunology in the NHS. It

took months for the DoH to answer his first

letter and almost six years for them to organise

the meeting that was finally held in October 1997.

At this meeting the health minister and the chief

medical officer gave an undertaking that there

would be a complete review attended by

independent international experts of Dr

Wakefield’s research, the meeting would be

relatively open and all opinions would be

considered. When it was organised by the MRC, one

MP who asked to go to this review on behalf of

constituents was told there were not enough

chairs and when he said he would stand he was told this was not allowed!

Between the mid-nineties and 1998 hundreds of

children suffering from the syndrome (vaccination

– gastrointestinal problems – regressive autism)

first identified by Dr Wakefield and colleagues

approached the Royal Free Hospital, and many of

their parents attributed their child’s illness to

MMR or MR. A number of these parents, had

contacted solicitors in order to make a claim

against three vaccine manufacturers. Although the

case on behalf of the parents was almost 10 years

in the making, six months before it was due to go

to court in 2004, legal aid was suddenly

withdrawn and this dealt the case a terminal blow.

In 1998, Dr Wakefield and twelve other academics

and clinicians, had the now famous paper

published in the Lancet (Ileal-lymphoid-nodular

hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive

developmental disorder in children. Wakefield AJ,

Murch SH, A, Linnell J, Casson DM, Malik

M, Berelowitz M, Dhillon AP, Thomson MA, Harvey

P, Valentine A, Davies SE, - JA.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease Study Group,

University Department of Medicine, Royal Free

Hospital and School of Medicine, London, UK The lancet, Mar 6;363(9411):750)

This paper was a case series describing twelve

children, 8 of whose parents said their children

had begun to experience serious problems soon

after MMR /MR vaccination. On clinical

examination, diagnosis and treatment at the Royal

Free, a majority of these children were found to

have both serious gastrointestinal problems

together with behavioural problems that presented like regressive autism.

This paper submitted to the Lancet was actually

accompanied by another paper giving details of

biological findings relating to the twelve

children. The intention was that the two papers

should have been published together. However,

while the first simple case series was published,

two out of the three peer reviewers turned down

the second paper. So it happened that the Lancet

case series appeared without any scientific

explanation of how the authors suggested these

conditions had occurred in children.

The Consequences of Dr Wakefield’s research

Since the mid-nineties through to the present

date there has been constant character

assassination carried out against Dr Wakefield;

this began to get worse after he tried, on a

number of occasions, to organise a meeting with the Department of Health.

After the 1998 paper, harassment and denial grew

massively, funding grants from pharmaceutical

companies were withdrawn, articles began to

appear in the press and other media about his

lack of science and the general daftness of his

ideas and finally in 2001 his contract at the Royal Free was ended.

Dr Wakefield was essentially forced out of the

country and went to work in the USA where, with

others, he set up the Thoughtful House project to

continue his research into environmental

triggers, gastrointestinal problems and autism.

By 2003/2004, the British Government needed to

deal a death blow to Wakefield’s work. This was

probably another strategy related to the court

case for which legal aid was withdrawn in 2004,

and the need to discredit Wakefield as a possible

expert witness in any proceedings.

In February 2004, Deer, a Sunday Times

journalist who had written a number of pro

vaccine articles uncritical of vaccine

manufacturers, wrote a long exposé in The Sunday

Times that claimed to be an investigation into Dr

Wakefield and the work of the gastrointestinal

team at the Royal Free. This article made

Wakefield out to be a money grabbing crook and a

useless scientist. Embedded in the article was a

quote from the then Minister of Health, Reid

who stated clearly that Dr Wakefield should be

reported to the General Medical Council. Within

two days of the article appearing, Deer had

lodged the sole complaint against Dr Wakefield

and his co authors with the General Medical Council.

Apparently it took the GMC, almost four years to

introduce any sense into the charges against the

doctors and in July 2007 they were arraigned

before a GMC fitness-to-practice panel. Although

there were almost 100 charges against the three

doctors, it was clear from the beginning that the

main purpose of the hearing was to ensure that Dr

Wakefield was kept out of circulation and unable

to comment again on the vaccine and autism issue.

The hearing which was initially scheduled to last

for a number of months, has been dragged out by

the GMC in such a way that though it started in

July 2007, it is now not due to finish before the

end of the first quarter of 2009.

There has been no press coverage of the

prosecution case at the GMC except on the first

day when all the main charges were advertised by

newspapers and television. In fact, the Science

Media Centre and Sense About Science and the

activists linked to these two pharmaceutically

funded lobby groups have been running a campaign

since the early 2000’s to censure from the media

all criticisms of science corporations and

scientific processes. Following the last major

article in the Observer that appeared just before

the GMC hearings began (see M. J.

<http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/ME-CFS_docs/Guardian%20of%20What_.p\

df>Guardian

of What?) the editor at the Observer resigned

after being put under heavy pressure amongst

other things, about this article. And in 2007,

the BBC banned, world wide, one already shown

episode of the Judge Deed drama series that

dealt with MMR, written and produced by Gordon Newman.

The science?

Science and politics

Although the case against Dr Wakefield, Professor

Murch and Professor - appears to be

one of scientific misconduct and the GMC are

suggesting that they have committed a number of

ethical and other misdemeanours, in reality the

case against the Royal Free doctors and the whole

campaign against Wakefield has parameters beyond science.

A wider interpretation of what has happened to Dr

Wakefield can be put down to the denial of

vaccine damage by the government, but an even

wider one involves the increase in cases of

autism in Britain and the US and the possibility

that these are triggered by environmental factors.

The science lobby groups and the New Labour

government are insistent that high technology and

new medical processes cannot cause adverse

reactions. Nowhere do they argue this with more

force than in the case of vaccination. In fact

their determination appears to be in more or less

exact relationship to the damage that MMR and MR

have done to children – the more damaged children

there are, the more aggressive the government

cover-up becomes. The government, the science

lobby groups and the medical establishment argue

vociferously that autism is a genetic condition

not caused by environmental exposures, for which

there is no treatment. As is the case with a

number of other ‘undiagnosed’ illnesses the

medical establishment cannot afford to ‘find’ an environmental cause of autism.

Government money granted to the MRC to look into

bio-medical and environmental causes of autism

has been given-over solely to genetic research.

This is a repeat of what happened with ME. In the

case of ME, money for research into bio-medical

and environmental causes of the condition was

given to researchers who believe in a psychiatric

aetiology of the illness and who refused to look at environmental triggers.

One of the ways that the division between science

and politics can be illustrated in the Wakefield

case is through the case of Arpad Pusztai. In

2001, Pusztai who was a well established and

highly qualified research worker at the Rowett

Institute, came to the conclusion through his

research that genetically modified potatoes (GM),

caused illnesses in the rats that he was

experimenting on. Within a matter of months of

his publicly announcing his research results,

Pusztai had lost his job and been vilified in the

press. The reason for this was that the immensely

powerful GM lobby, of which the science lobby

groups are a centre aspect, were not willing to

tolerate any public criticism of GM produce. (See www.gmwatch.com)

We can see how in the Pusztai case, the normal

course of science was diverted. The normal course

of science is quite clear. The only thing that

can assess or rebut the conclusions of a

scientific study is a new research project,

carried out by independent scientists, that

replicates the research results after carrying

out research under similar conditions, using

similarly defined subjects in order for comparisons to be made.

If good scientific procedure is followed, there

is no way round this. For instance you cannot

just carry out a review of all the research

papers which mention GM potatoes and health in

their title and conclude that none of them

mention serious illness. This is not

scientifically credible because although these

previous papers might have GM potatoes in their

title they might be focused on ways of

germinating GM potatoes or ways of cooking them

or any number of things other than the specific

clinical effect in rats which have been fed

certain quantities. The research has to be replicated exactly.

Wakefield’s Hypothesis

Dr Wakefield’s paper in the Lancet was a case

series describing twelve children most of whom

had been said by their parents to have reacted

adversely to the MMR vaccine with

gastrointestinal difficulties and then

behavioural problems that have been labelled as

regressive autism. Wakefield’s hypothesis can be put as follows.

--There exists a subset of children who are

vulnerable, for immunological reasons, to

developing a particular form of developmental

regression following previously normal

development, in combination with a novel form of

inflammatory bowel disease. Onset, which may be

acute or insidious, may be triggered by exposure

to a measles containing vaccine, predominantly

the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR). Exposure

leads to long-term infection with measles virus

within key sites, including the intestine, where

it is associated with lymphoid hyperplasia and

acute and chronic mucosal inflammation.--

Neither the Medical Research Council nor any

government agency has sought to replicate the

clinically based research of Dr Wakefield. It is,

however, important to understand what replication

would mean. The clinical research would have to

begin with children who reported gastrointestinal

problems combined with loss of previously

acquired skills. A large proportion of the

parents of these children would have made some

connection between vaccination and their

children’s gastrointestinal difficulties. In

other words, any test of Wakefield’s hypothesis

would need to investigate children with a similar

presentation to the clinical cohort of 12

children who had initially reported to doctors

with serious gastrointestinal problems.

Instead of entering into a scientific debate, the

government, the MRC and the science lobby groups

funded by the pharmaceutical industry, did a

number of things in addition to vilifying Dr

Wakefield. They published, re-published or drew

attention to a number of epidemiological studies

that had looked at large numbers of cases of

children who had received MMR. They suggested

that these studies proved that MMR did not cause

autism, however most of these studies did not

look at autism and its links to MMR, most of the

studies did not look at children who had bowel

disease and none of the studies were of children

whose parents had reported an adverse reaction to MMR or any other vaccine.

Large scale epidemiological studies are not the

right instrument for tracking the clinical cause

of an illness. While a properly designed

epidemiological study might show a variety of

correlations between different factors, further

clinical work would always be necessary to trace

the exact cause, course and reason for any

illness. Of course, if epidemiological studies

are improperly designed, or designed for another

purpose, they will not even show the correlation

between various important factors. In this case,

Dr Wakefield is one of the only people whose

research has been based on the clinical findings

in children and has established the novel course

of the illness. Consequently, the many

epidemiological studies that have been carried

out both before and after this work, since they

do not look at children with the same

combinations of illness as those studied by Dr

Wakefield are fundamentally flawed and are simply

used to suggest that there is no validity to the Wakefield hypothesis.

The other tactic that the government, the medical

establishment and the science lobby groups have

used is to suggest that Wakefield and his

supporters have actually said: ‘Autism is caused

by vaccination’. By turning the finally balanced

clinically-based observations of Dr Wakefield,

that refer to a definite sub-group of children

into a crude suggestion like this, Wakefield and

his followers can not only be made to appear

ridiculous but also the ‘theory’ can be simply

discredited by looking at children who are

autistic but have not been vaccinated or

conversely the thousands of children who have

been vaccinated without developing any kind of autism.

Finally the ‘opposition’ has insisted from the

first publication of the Lancet paper, that a

group of 12 children demonstrate nothing,

especially without a ‘control group’. The truth

is of course that the paper was not the report of

a random double blind clinical trial, but a

simple case review of 12 cases that had been

given clinical assessment and then treatment at

the Royal Free. Indeed at the time of publication

the paper carried a foot note that indicated that

40 children had been investigated and 39 of these

had been found to have the same bowel findings

and within a year of the publication of this

paper Dr Wakefield and the team at the Royal Free

had announced that they had dealt with many more

children who presented with similar symptoms.

However, despite the unscientific propaganda of

the lobbies, the government and the vaccine

industry, scientific evidence is gradually being

presented that adds weight to each part of Dr

Wakefield’s proposition, amongst the many papers are ones such as these three:

Poling, JS, Frye RE, Shoffner J, Zimmerman AW.

Developmental regression and mitochondrial

dysfunction in a child with autism. Journal of

Child Neurology. 2006;21:170-172.

, L., et al., Endoscopic and Histological

Characteristics of the Digestive Mucosa in

Autistic Children with gastro-Intestinal

Symptoms: A Preliminary Report. GEN Suplemento

Especial de Pediatria 2005. 1: p.41-47.

Welch, M.G., et al., Brain effects of chronic IBD

in areas abnormal in autism and treatment by

single neuropeptides secretin and oxytocin. JMol

Neurosci, 2005. 25(3): p. 259-74.

A major bibliography of the published links

between regressive autism, bowel disease and MMR

can be found at the end of Thrower’s useful

paper,

<http://www.vaproject.org/thrower/mmr-briefing-20070430.htm>‘Regressive

Autism, Ileal-Lymphoid Nodular Hyperplasia,

Measles Virus and MMR Vaccine: Summary of

Published Studies Offering Evidence for

Linkages’. This can be downloaded in Pdf form.

In Britain all court cases on behalf of vaccine

damaged claimants have been stopped. However, in

America, last November, a judge in a Federal

Vaccine Court awarded an out of court settlement

of a life-time care compensation package, to one

of three test cases, representing 4,900 children

who it was agreed was damaged by multiple

vaccines and is now autistic. Pharmaceutical

companies agree out of court settlements for only

two reasons: first they see that they are facing

defeat on the science at trial and second, faced

with defeat they prefer not to have a Judge make

a legal ruling that will act as a precedent in future cases.

This out of court settlement, the first to

acknowledge the link between vaccinations and

autism, is bound to have a considerable effect

upon the way in which Wakefield’s work is now

considered. This decision, made in concert with

the pharmaceutical companies, gives the lie to

all the lobby group’s previous propaganda.

The Campaign in Support of Dr Wakefield and Others

Not one parent has complained about the treatment

that their child received under the care of the

clinical team at the Royal Free. Indeed, because

the parents of vaccine damaged children entirely

support the work of Wakefield, Murch and

-, the GMC clearly could not call any

of them as complainants against the doctors.

Because they didn’t want Deer’s motives

disclosed under cross examination, they have not

called him either. So it would appear that there

is no real complainant behind the GMC hearings.

More importantly perhaps the voices of the

children and the parents have been stifled in

this whole process while both the government and

the GMC have tried hard to convince the public

that there are no vaccine damaged children.

For all the above reasons the CryShame group of

parents and professionals are about to publish a

book written by the parents, that discusses how

they have coped with and cared for their vaccine

damaged children and the denial of their

circumstances by the government, the

pharmaceutical companies and the science lobby

groups. The book will be available after March 23

from <http://www.cryshame.com>www.cryshame.com

and via

<http://www.slingshotpublications.com>www.slingshotpublications.com.

Also available on the Cry Shame web site is a

short film shot at the opening of the GMC case

that includes interviews with parents of vaccine

damaged children who support Dr Wakefield.

And it is principally for this reason, as well as

to give support to the doctors that there is a

Demonstration outside the GMC, on the Euston

Road, on the morning of March 27th 2008 beginning

at 8.30 so that parents and their vaccine damaged

children can make public their opposition to the

GMC, corporate lobby groups, the paediatric establishment and Deer.

J

7 March 2008

* * *

Reminder of link to send a message of support to Wakefield

Send a message of support and/or nominate a child

http://www.cryshame.co.uk//index.php?option=com_artforms & formid=1 & Itemid=120

CryShame needs to raise money to finance the

demonstration and other ventures. If you are able

to distribute this and other CryShame information

on any lists please do so. Send this document out

with your own email explaining the need for funding.

<http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/vaccines/CryShame%20Appeal%20-%20Su\

pport%20The%20MMR%20Vaccine%20Trial%20Doctors.pdf>CryShame

Appeal - Support The MMR Vaccine Trial Doctors

<http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/vaccines/THE%20UK%20MMR%20VACCINE%2\

0TRIAL%20DEMONSTRATION.pdf>The

UK MMR Vaccine Trial Demonstration