Wakefield's Fees - The Story Keeps Changing

Going through my notes I found this one.


"We declare that:  Dr. Wakefield is a man of honesty, integrity, courage, and proven commitment to children and the public health."  Where do we learn this? Why at the online petition site  (I love the site name) http://www.wesupportandywakefield.com.


Where did the money go?
Here's what Wakefield said in February 2009. in a written emailed response [May26th, 2010 the link was to the childhealthsafety blog, but the article has been removed, see here for the same information] to questions Brian Deers' newspaper required him to ask Wakefield.

Any payment that I received over the course of working for more than 7 years as a expert to the UK courts...was donated to an initiative to build a new center for the investigation and care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease at the Royal Free. This matter is described in more detail in a forthcoming essay by Bill Long, access to which will be posted in due course at http://www.drbilllong.com/index.html.  

The Bill Long essays are based on January 2009 interviews.  In essay IX,  according to Mr. Long, the UK courts chopped a £100,000 off the £435,000 and the law firm didn't pay him £35000.  With the £300,000 he received, Wakefield paid for a researcher.  Nothing is said about donating a penny to the Royal Free.

In documents released in Dec. 2006, Wakefield is said to have received £435,000 for  his work on the lawsuit--making him the highest-paid expert in the entire case. This might be expected, since his work on Crohn's disease, the GI tract and the potential connection of the measles virus to the development of Crohn's disease was foundational for Barr's case. But a closer look at that £435,000 Pounds ($780,000) reveals less meets the eye. The court overseeing the litigation decided that it wouldn't award £100,000 of those £435,000. Then, the Barr law firm decided to withhold about £35,000 after the highly critical Feb. 2004 stories about Wakefield began to appear. With the British tax of 40%, this brings his "earnings" down to about £180,000 Pounds for seven years of engagement in the litigation. From this he paid for a research assistant and then paid at least £100,000 Pounds to file and update the patent application. Decisions to file in jurisdictions as wide as America, Europe, England and Japan drained a good deal of the expert fee money he earned. Thus, at the end of it all, Wakefield didn't "get rich" on either the patent application or the expert fees he earned. Most of it was invested in ways that would hopefully benefit the School of Medicine and patients with intestinal disease."

The UK courts awarded Wakefield £435,643 in fees. See the note at the top of the chart. Fees and expenses are assessed (taxed) by a UK court. The money goes to the lawyers who pay the experts.


The basis for his claim to have decided to give the money to a research centre is based on a letter he wrote in 1995 to the Royal Free Hospital. This was a time before he even met the lawyer leading the UK MMR lawsuit.  Unfortunately, I can't find the link again.

This is Wakefield. Within a month or two, Wakefield tells two different stories about the money, neither one of which is true.

Addendum May 28, 2010
I've now found the link to Wakefield's responses to an email of Brian Deer in December 2006 on the fees he received.  Wakefield wrote:

3. The money that I received was, after tax and out of pocket expenses, donated to an initiative to create a new center, in the first instance at the Royal Free Hospital, for the care of autistic children and those with bowel disease. This was unsuccessful at the Royal Free but ultimately succeeded in the US. This intention was made clear, in writing, to senior members of the medical school. 

5. The costs judge has revised the sum payable, by nearly £100,000 and I am happy to abide by this ruling. A substantial part of this money was not paid to me in the first place.

and

The letter to the Dean, copied to other senior members of the medical school, describing my efforts to create a new centre for the care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, is dated 30th March 1995. I say this just in case you were tempted to say that you had contacted the medical school but no one knew anything about it.

Brian Deer added this footnote.

Here is the letter of 30 March 1995 which Wakefield says evidences that the money he received, “after tax and out of pocket expenses”, was donated to an initiative at the Royal Free hospital. This letter, in which he admits to trying to give himself a professorship, was written before he had ever been approached over the litigation.

Unfortunately, the link to the letter is broken.