Your Turn

I looked at the 5 page (large font) response There's nothing I haven't read from Wakefield before.

As evidence see my personal blog www.vaccin­eswork.blo­gspot.com

Now it is your turn. But it will take a lot more time.

Most importantl­y

The Web Extra and Brian Deer's Interview on the BMJ podcast

Then read these

1. The GMC fact finding decision

2. Wakefield'­s GMC sanction decision

3 BMJ 1

Lying to their Supporters -

You would think that extremist groups would avoid lying to their supporters. By that I mean deliberate dishonesty.  Because that can turn the supporters away.

Age of Autism has just done this.  By linking to an article by Mike Adams of Natural News.  Mike's revelation proving that Wakefield was done wrong is to point to a presentation by Professor Walker-Smith in December 1996, some 14 months before the 1998 paper came out. In that presentation, Walker-Smith reported finding very similar to those that would be made in 1998.   According to Mike Adams, these were independent.

Now Mike Adams might have been so ignorant that he, despite repeatedly writing on the subject, doesn't know that Professor Walker-Smith  was the second (though by custom listed last) author on the paper. He might not know that Walker-Smith did the initial clinical examinations of the children. Certainly Walker-Smith wasn't independent.

But Age of Autism certainly knows. Yet they put a link to the article and allow (because they censor) comments supporting this nonsense.  So yes, AoA deliberately lies to its readers.  

More Idiocy on behalf of Wakefield

There were 12 authors for the notorious 1998 paper that linked MMR to autism.

You would think that those who comment on it and especially those who write long articles about it, would know who the key players are. They were Wakefield, Walker-Smith (by custom listed last as an author) and Murch.

All 3 faced a UK medical licensing hearing. Wakefield had his name erased. He had an appeal, but has abandoned it.  Walker-Smith is retired, he also had his name erased, but is appealing. Murch lucked out as although the fact-finding decision went against him, he wasn't even reprimanded.  I think it has to do with his status as a professor of medicine.

So Wakefield and his sycophants are looking for ways to defend him.  The latest is to point to a presentation in December 1996 on 7 of the children. Supposedly it is independent evidence that Wakefield's idea was correct. The article is by Mike Adams of Natural News.

Guess who were included in the presenters.

No, it wasn't Wakefield and Walker-Smith. Even Adams isn't that stupid.  No, the presenters included Walker-Smith.

Sharyl Attkisson CBS News Wakefield Sympathizer Keeps Quiet

Sharyl Attkinsson is a Wakefield sympathizer and a critic of current vaccination policies. She lies.

But I didn't remember seeing any story or comment by her on the articles in the BMJ that demonstrated Wakefield didn't accurately report the medical histories of the children.  Fraudulently, he reported them differently in the 1998 paper.

So I did a site search at cbsnews.com  "wakefield  Sharyl Attkisson  news site:cbsnews.com"  (without quotes) and limited the search to the last month.   There were 5 results, but four were comments on the fifth result.   Here it is:

So in the month when everyone else is writing stories about the BMJ articles that demonstrate Wakefield's fraudulence, Ms . Attkinsson doesn't write on that story.

Instead it is a  The Search for Safer Vaccines, a story about the death of a child after DTaP vaccination. It looks like the vaccine actually caused the death.   But there is nothing in the story about the search for safer vaccines. There are the quotes from the usual suspects.  And there is the  usual Sharyl Attkinsson lie.

The vaccine compensation programs vaccine court has never determined that compensation should be paid because there is a biologically plausible mechanism (a lot less than caused) linking vaccines to autism.
Similarly, the US government has never made such a concession.   Rather compensation has been paid because the government conceded that there was a biologically plausible mechanism linking vaccination to autistic-like symptoms.   Notice the difference. One is a diagnosis, autism.  The other is a symptom of another condition and that symptom is also a symptom of autism.

CBS should require her to  investigate the BMJ articles and  write an article. Then,  as a journalist who has lied about a subject, at the minimum CBS should take her off writing on vaccines.

Deer saw the records of the kids in the Wakefield paper legally

An irrelevant attack on Brian Deer is that he didn't see the medical records of the kids in the 1998 Wakefield paper legally.

Brian Deer explained how he saw the records legally.

"To clarify a point I have clarified many times. I read the children's hospital records, under legal supervision, as the result of an order against Andrew Wakefield issued by a High Court judge. Thus there can be no question of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Since Wakefield abandoned his action against me and, very sadly, we didn't get him to trial, I could make no collateral use of the knowledge I had obtained by reading the records.

However, one cannot un-know something. I determined that the best course of action would be to attend the Wakefield GMC where, as it happens, those medical records, plus a great deal more were introduced in public. I think I was the only non-participant who took any notice, although the anti-vaxxers paid someone to sit through the hearing.

This is how the critical patient data has come to be published in the BMJ, after staff checking, independent of me, and peer review.

I hope that makes it clear, since it seems some people are interested.

Posted by: Brian Deer | January 10, 2011 2:36 PM

I missed this when reading the comments, thanks to highnumber at Huff-Po for the link

Read the BMJ article on Wakefield

I've been following the saga of Andrew Wakefield and his 1998 study closely. However, I'm still surprised by the extent of Andrew Wakefield's deception in that study. 

Wakefield's study noted that of the 12 children in the study, 6 of them had regressive autism and non-specific colitis and the symptoms of regression starting within days of MMR (measles mumps rubella) vaccination. A close examination of the records and interviews with the parent reveals that of the 12 children in the study, this was true of 0 children. That's the bottom line. When you look at each of the 12 children, 0 children. were accurately described on all 3 criteria.  No wonder the BMJ article is titled How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed

Especially for those who somehow think that Andrew Wakefield is an honest and ethical man, this article should end that delusion. But I really doubt that it will. For those who have stood with him until now, I doubt that any new information will make a difference. In the vain hope that they might actually look, the full article is available for free. The table described above is included. The table is repeated with 93 footnotes (click on Data Supplement) for those who really want the details.

The article is I an amazingly detailed, painstaking piece of work. And the BMJ went out of their way to preempt some of the criticisms that would be hurled at it. At the end of the article we find:

Funding: Brian Deer’s investigation was funded by the Sunday Times of London and the Channel 4 television network. Reports by Deer in the BMJwere commissioned and paid for by the journal. No other funding was received, apart from legal costs paid to Deer by the Medical Protection Society on behalf of Andrew Wakefield.

Competing interests: The author has completed the unified competing interest form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from him) and declares no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisation that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; BD’s investigation led to the GMC proceedings referred to in this report, including the charges. He made many submissions of information but was not a party or witness in the case, nor involved in its conduct.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

The good news is that many vaccination opponents and their organizations are defending Wakefield. That's bad from the perspective of seeking the truth, but great for using as a weapon against them.

Not a Conspiracy

Vaccination opponents don't really think it is a conspiracy.

In Too Many People,  Julie Obradovic argues that it isn't necessary for there to be actual conspiracy amongst a great many people that hides the truth of the link between vaccines and autism. 

Contrary to what my critics might believe, I agree keeping a secret among that many people is preposterous. Heck, it's hard enough to keep a secret between two people. But I do believe keeping a secret is quite different than perpetuating an untruth or manipulating an unpleasant one. We commonly refer to it as denial, and I know we can all point to some part of our life when we used masterful mental tricks to convince ourselves of something we really wanted to be true that wasn't (or vice versa), especially when we may have been the ones to cause the problem in the first place.

Ok. But there is a problem.  Age of Autism strictly censors the contents of comments.  You write a comment that isn't in keeping with what they like and it never appears.  But the comments they publish in response are interesting because a fair number of them do believe that there is an actual conspiracy. Oops.