MMR row doctor spreads fear to US

[Guest guest]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article4837798.ece

From The Sunday Times

September 28, 2008

MMR row doctor spreads fear to US

The medic blamed for a fall in child vaccination sets up clinic in Texas

Harlow

Wakefield, the doctor under investigation over research claiming to

link the MMR vaccine to autism, is relaunching his career in America with

the aid of pop music and Hollywood celebrities.

Even as the medical regulator considers ending his career as a doctor in

Britain, Wakefield has established a new clinic in Texas funded by the

parents of autistic children.

Its supporters include Jim Carrey, the actor, his girlfriend McCarthy,

a former Playboy model, and the Dixie Chicks, the all-girl rock group.

Last week McCarthy and Carrey were given an hour on the influential Oprah

Winfrey Show to promote her latest best-selling book, Mother Warriors, which

maintains that vaccines trigger autism in infants – a theory critics now

call “Wake-fieldism”.

This dates back to 1998, when Wakefield, then a researcher at the Royal Free

hospital in north London, published an article in The Lancet in which he

linked 12 children suffering from the developmental disorder with MMR

injections. The subsequent furore was blamed for a big decline in the number

of parents immunising their children against measles.

Wakefield was supported by some parents who felt he was the first doctor to

take their children’s problems seriously; but as other independent

scientists repeatedly failed to replicate Wakefield’s results in the

laboratory, 10 out of 12 of his Lancet co-authors retracted their support

for his conclusions.

Wakefield, 51, is accused at the General Medical Council (GMC) of

suppressing data and acting “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in failing to

disclose how patients were recruited for the study.

This follows an investigation by The Sunday Times in 2004, which revealed

that some of the children in his study were recruited by lawyers seeking to

sue MMR manufacturers, and that he did not disclose thousands of pounds he

received in “legal aid” to carry out experiments seeking to show how a

vaccine could cause brain damage.

Wakefield is also accused of showing a “callous disregard for distress and

pain” after performing colonoscopies and lumbar punctures on children. It

was revealed at GMC hearings earlier this year that he paid children £5 to

take blood samples at his son’s birthday party.

He said he maintained the highest ethical standards at all times. Hearings

resume in November and the GMC is expected to decide next spring whether he

should be struck off the medical register for professional misconduct.

Wakefield was “asked to leave” the Royal Free hospital in 2001. Three years

later he moved with his wife Carmel to Austin, Texas where he made friends

with Charlie Ball, a wealthy property development agent, and his wife Troy,

who have an autistic son.

The Balls gave land and raised donations to build a clinic called Thoughtful

House, to help children with autism. It maintains Wakefield’s core claims.

Board members include two more Dixie Chicks, Robison and Martie

Maguire, who is an official “adviser”.

Last week Wakefield, who lives in a £600,000, five-bed-room home in Austin,

did not respond to inquiries by The Sunday Times. He is more talkative on

the lucrative lecture circuit. Over the next few weeks he will speak on his

theory of autism in California, Florida and, in December, at a

chiropractors’ conference in the Bahamas.

Wakefield’s theory is defended by Jay Gordon, McCarthy’s doctor in west Los

Angeles. “We are called dangerous for saying that vaccines cause autism, but

to me, as a experienced paediatrician, it makes sense. If it’s not mercury,

it’s aluminium in the injections.”

McCarthy’s devoted followers believe in a conspiracy by government agencies

and pharmaceutical companies to hide evidence of a vaccine link.

Offit, professor of paedi-atrics at the University of Penn-sylvania,

warned: “Wakefield’s malign influence is spreading across the United States,

where we have seen vaccination rates drop and unprecedented chains of

measles infections in the last year.”

85%: Proportion of two-year-olds in England given MMR jab; 10% below target