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The victims of Andrew Wakefield
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/10/15/the-victims-of-andrew-wakefield/Things got a bit hectic the other day; so if this seems familiar, forgive me. On the other hand, I do believe that this material is probably more suited to this blog rather than other blogs, given the history here and how long I’ve been covering the quackery spawned by Andrew Wakefield, arguably the most famous antivaccine guru in the world.
This time around, I’m talking about a report published over the weekend by Brian Deer. Deer, as you might recall, remains the one journalist who was able to crack the facade of seeming scientific legitimacy built up by antivaccine guru Andrew Wakefield and demonstrate that (1) Wakefield’s work concluding that the MMR vaccine was associated with “autistic enterocolitis” was bought and paid for by a solicitor named Richard Barr, who represented British parents looking to sue vaccine manufacturers, to the tune of over £400,000; (2) Wakefield expected to make over £72 million a year selling a test for which Wakefield had filed a patent application in March 1995 claiming that “Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis may be diagnosed by detecting measles virus in bowel tissue, bowel products or body fluids”; and Wakefield’s case series published in The Lancet in 1998 was fraudulent, the equivalent of what Deer correctly characterized as “Piltdown medicine.” Ultimately, these revelations led to Wakefield’s being completely discredited to the point where The Lancet retracted his paper and even Thoughtful House, the autism quackery clinic in Austin, TX where Wakefield had a cushy, well-paid position as scientific director, had to give him the boot. Yes, Wakefield is a fraud, and it’s only a shame that it took over a decade for it to be demonstrated.
As much as I hate how it took discrediting Wakefield the man as a fraud rather than just discrediting his bogus science (which is not that difficult to do from a strictly scientific standpoint) to really begin to turn the tide against the annoying propensity of journalists to look to Wakefield or his acolytes for “equal time” and “balance” whenever stories about autism and vaccines reared their ugly heads, I can’t argue with the results. Wakefield is well and truly discredited now, so much so that, as I noted, his prominent involvement probably ruined any chance promoters of the “CDC whistleblower” scam ever had to get any traction from the mainstream press.
What is sometimes forgotten is the effect Wakefield’s message has had on parents. These are the sorts of parents who tend to congregate into groups designed to promote the idea that vaccines are dangerous and cause autism, such as the bloggers at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, the equally cranky blog The Thinking Moms’ Revolution, or groups like The Canary Party. It is Wakefield’s message and the “autism biomed” quackery that it spawned that have led to unknown numbers of autistic children being subjected to the rankest form of quackery in order to “recover” them, up to and including dubious stem cell therapies and bleach enemas. These parents continue to be drawn to the charismatic Wakefield like moths to a flame, and he takes advantage of that to hit them up for cash every chance he gets as he continues to blame, without evidence, the MMR vaccine for autism.
This time around, I’m talking about a report published over the weekend by Brian Deer. Deer, as you might recall, remains the one journalist who was able to crack the facade of seeming scientific legitimacy built up by antivaccine guru Andrew Wakefield and demonstrate that (1) Wakefield’s work concluding that the MMR vaccine was associated with “autistic enterocolitis” was bought and paid for by a solicitor named Richard Barr, who represented British parents looking to sue vaccine manufacturers, to the tune of over £400,000; (2) Wakefield expected to make over £72 million a year selling a test for which Wakefield had filed a patent application in March 1995 claiming that “Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis may be diagnosed by detecting measles virus in bowel tissue, bowel products or body fluids”; and Wakefield’s case series published in The Lancet in 1998 was fraudulent, the equivalent of what Deer correctly characterized as “Piltdown medicine.” Ultimately, these revelations led to Wakefield’s being completely discredited to the point where The Lancet retracted his paper and even Thoughtful House, the autism quackery clinic in Austin, TX where Wakefield had a cushy, well-paid position as scientific director, had to give him the boot. Yes, Wakefield is a fraud, and it’s only a shame that it took over a decade for it to be demonstrated.
As much as I hate how it took discrediting Wakefield the man as a fraud rather than just discrediting his bogus science (which is not that difficult to do from a strictly scientific standpoint) to really begin to turn the tide against the annoying propensity of journalists to look to Wakefield or his acolytes for “equal time” and “balance” whenever stories about autism and vaccines reared their ugly heads, I can’t argue with the results. Wakefield is well and truly discredited now, so much so that, as I noted, his prominent involvement probably ruined any chance promoters of the “CDC whistleblower” scam ever had to get any traction from the mainstream press.
What is sometimes forgotten is the effect Wakefield’s message has had on parents. These are the sorts of parents who tend to congregate into groups designed to promote the idea that vaccines are dangerous and cause autism, such as the bloggers at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, the equally cranky blog The Thinking Moms’ Revolution, or groups like The Canary Party. It is Wakefield’s message and the “autism biomed” quackery that it spawned that have led to unknown numbers of autistic children being subjected to the rankest form of quackery in order to “recover” them, up to and including dubious stem cell therapies and bleach enemas. These parents continue to be drawn to the charismatic Wakefield like moths to a flame, and he takes advantage of that to hit them up for cash every chance he gets as he continues to blame, without evidence, the MMR vaccine for autism.
Wakefield is the King of frauds. Anyone defending him, especially using links to crank sites like ageofautism or aventuresinautism, is a fool. He's most definitely not the "Carl Sagan of his generation", as one DUer has described him.
Sid
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