Andrew Wakefield - the Kangaroo Court has spoken
Andrew Wakefield - love him or hate him - the one thing you can't do is be indifferent to him.
In 1998, Wakefield published a case series concerning 12 children who had the regressive form of autism. A case series is different from a study - it is simply a description of cases that had presented to him as a gastroenterologist working at the Royal Free Hospital in London. The Lancet was conscious of the fact that any article concerning possible problems with vaccination would be very controversial and so, they subjected this case series to twice the normal number of peer-reviewers and only after it had passed this test, did they print his paper.
The controversy was immediate with the media busy repeating what the drug companies were telling them - no research please, we're journos!
Let me explain that I support Andrew Wakefield 100%. I disagree with his stance on the safety of individual vaccines, but I applaud his integrity, ethics and desire to help children nobody else will. He has put his career on the line (and lost it) and spent every cent he has to try and see justice done. And for all of this, the media and the medical community persist in accusing him of fraud (and worse) and telling lies about him.
They claimed that Wakefield said that the MMR vaccine caused autism. That is not true. He simply said that 8 out of the 12 parents in this series said that their children had regressed into autism after receiving the MMR vaccine. He also said that all of these children were suffering from a new form of bowel disorder called Illeal Lymphoid Hyperplasia. All of this is verifiable fact.
The claimed that Wakefield had told people not to take the vaccine. Again, this is a lie. Wakefield said that the safety testing for the MMR vaccine was inadequate and until the proper testing had been carried out, parents might want to consider giving their children the individual shots rather than the combined vaccine. The government's response to this very reasonable, far from anti-vaccine suggestion was to withdraw the licenses for individual shots, thereby taking away parental choice.
They stated that because of Wakefield's article, people stopped vaccinating and cases of and deaths from measles shot up. Again, completely untrue.
As you can see from the following table (Dr Andrew Wakefield is Being Blamed for the Decline in Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccination in the UK, but that's not what really happened), in the 10 years before Wakefield's article was published in the Lancet, vaccination rates for these three vaccines declined by very nearly 50%. Per capita, it's probably an even greater decline due to the increase in population which would have occurred over these 10 years. (The figures below represent the number of children vaccinated and should be multiplied by 1,000)
So today, when the British Medical Journal republished the same old news stating that Wakefield was a fraud and everyone should just stop saying that vaccines are linked with autism due to the discrediting of this single case series consisting of 12 families (and discounting the 80 years or so of medical literature pointing to a possible connection between vaccination and behavioural issues), the media went into their usual feeding frenzy. Imagine the opportunity to do something nice for their advertisers and at the same time, stick the knife into those people who are mad enough to think that we need to make medical decisions based on science rather than peer group pressure.
In this environment, I was asked to do an interview on 2UE. Had I known that it was Tracey Spicer who was interviewing me, I would never have agreed because I've read some of her 'work' in recent weeks in the Sydney Morning Herald and have not appreciated her rabid blaming of the unvaccinated for illness in the vaccinated (come on - can we please use some logic here?) and her fear-based anger at those families whose children have been injured by vaccines, leading others to question this medical procedure.
Below is a transcript of the 'interview' - if you want to call it that. She barely let me get a word in edgewise and to my mind, just wanted an opportunity to gloat about my having seen the errors of my way concerning Wakefield now that this new, ground-breaking research (NOT!) had been published in the BMJ. She was sorely disappointed and to be honest, seemed like a bit of a sore-loser.
It's one thing for her to abuse me - but when one of our members called in during the talk-back - a woman who has spent years and untold thousands of dollars recovering her son from autism (including having to sell her house to fund treatments), I couldn't help thinking that Ms Spicer had gone too far. If you think so too, Please do write a letter to the station and let them know. You can make comments on the page for this particular interview which you can get to by clicking here. Or better still, send them an email via their contact page by clicking here.
The woman in question wrote a letter to the show which I will include after the transcript so feel free to use that to get ideas. We need to let programs like this know that we are angry about being misled and also about the government trying to suppress our right to information on this important issue.
T: The link between autism and vaccinations has been completely and entirely discredited once and for all. The British Medical Journal declared that the research of Mr Andrew Wakefield was not only flawed but it was fraudulent. You might remember that it was his 1998 study that first linked autism with the measles mumps rubella vaccine. Based on this evidence by Dr Andrew Wakefield, tens of thousands of parents around the world stopped vaccinating their children. One of the lowest levels of vaccination in Australia is in the area around Byron Bay. Meryl Dorey lives in this region. She is the most vocal critic of vaccination in this country and she runs the Australian Vaccination Network and she is on the line. How are you Meryl?
M: I’m good, Tracy. How are you?
T: Good thanks. Surely after all this though, you must now admit that you’ve based your scare campaign on fraudulent and misleading information.
M: Tracy, I love your language! Unfortunately, this subject is far from put to bed., and the news that came out in the British Medical Journal is not news at all. It’s simply a rehashing of accusations that were made previously. The fact is… (Tracey speaks over me)
T: The fact is Meryl, it has been discredited.
M: No, it hasn’t.
T: And it’s confusing (?) the entire research upon which people have not vaccinated their children and children have died from whooping cough and measles as a result.
M: We…children have died in Australia from whooping cough and we have the highest level of whooping cough vaccination we have ever had and the majority of the people getting whooping cough are vaccinated. But back to Wakefield. (Tracey interrupts me again)
T: And they get a lower dose of whooping cough once they’ve been vaccinated.
M: Back to Wakefield.
T; Yes, but it’s a lower dose. Yes, go on.
M: Back to Wakefield. The accusation is that Wakefield took money while he was doing an investigation on behalf of lawyers who were hoping to take a lawsuit on behalf of children who had developed regressive autism after the measles, mumps rubella vaccine. Wakefield had actually revealed that information to the Lancet prior to the article being published and it was 50,000 pounds we’re talking about and this was money that was used to pay for tests on these children. It didn’t go into his pocket.
If we think that is an unreasonable thing for Wakefield to do, why is Paul Offitt in the United States who made tens of millions of dollars selling a patent on a rotavirus vaccine for which he sat on the committee to approve that vaccine in the United States still in a job?
The fact is that vaccination and autism are linked in the minds of many researchers. On our home page…
T: You were ordered by the Australian Health Care Commission to put a disclaimer on your website…
M: That’s right.
T: …saying that there is no link and…
M: No, no, no, no, no. You’re wrong there (Tracey continued to speak while I was speaking and I can not make out every word).
T: …misinformation.
M: Tracey, you’re wrong about that as well.
T: I’m certainly not wrong about that.
M: The Healthcare Complaints Commission asked us to put a warning on our website to say we were anti-vaccination
T: No, no. They found that your website contained information that was deceptive and misleading and quotes selectively from research to suggest that vaccines are dangerous. I quote that word for word.
M: But you just said that they asked us to put a warning on to say that there was no link (Tracey interrupts me again)…
T: You even had your fundraising status revoked and were ordered to post a disclaimer on your website. I looked at your website this morning and there is no such disclaimer.
M: That’s right. We have refused to do that and we are also appealing that decision with the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing.
T: In the meantime, you are required to post a disclaimer.
M: No, no. We’re not required to do anything (Tracey continued to speak while I tried to answer this point).
T: And this will lead to children being killed, Meryl.
M: Tracey, do you want to talk about Andrew Wakefield and the measles and the fact that the rate of autism has increased by something over 2,000% since the introduction of multiple vaccinations … (Tracey interrupts again).
T: Yes Meryl, and it’s coincidental.
M: (Laughing) Is that your professional opinion Tracey because there are many doctors … (interruptions again)
T: After doing research and talking to researchers, autism rates continued to rise in Japan after the withdrawal of the MMR .
M: Well, I’d like to direct people to our website where we have several studies (Tracey continued to speak angrily in the background while I tried to say this)
T: I’m going to end the interview now. Let’s just end the interview. That was Meryl Dorey from the Australian Vaccination Network who, if she continues to spread this deceptive and misleading information that ends up killing children, We will no longer have her on our program. We had her on our program hoping she would finally, once and for all after the British Medical Journal put this out this morning, retract the dangerous information she has been disseminating. She obviously, despite a finding by the Australian Health Care Complaints Commission and a ruling that she should be taking down her website, she refuses to do so.
Let me tell you some of the things on her website.
Under the heading measles, mumps, rubella, she states that these are all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood.
(note from Meryl – I'm not sure what she is referring to. On the MMR page, I have a quote from Dr Peter Baratosy that says:
Measles was a common childhood disease prior to the introduction of widespread vaccination, and up until about 30 years ago was generally described as a benign illness. The difference today is that children seem to have become weaker due to drugs, pollution, vaccinations and poor nutrition” (Dr. Peter Baratosy).
Tell that to the 160,000 people who lose children every year to measles. Measles is a plague. It’s been proven (laughs) to have killed 200 million people worldwide.
And to say that vaccinations are linked to anything as dangerous as, you know, bringing on autism in children, is just absolutely absurd.
It’s been proven that not vaccinating children means they can die from measles, from whooping cough and any one of a number of illnesses.
What Meryl doesn’t tell you is it’s not just the fact that Dr Andrew Wakefield took money – it was actually 677,000 dollars – not 50,000 dollars – from a class action law firm that was planning on suing the manufactuers of the MMR vaccine. What she also failed to tell you is that his research has been entirely discredited. It was a very small sample and some of the children who developed autism were showing signs even before they were vaccinated. So this is an absolute outrage. What do you think? (gives out the talkback number 131332).
Are you as angry about this as I am? I have a friend whose child almost died from whooping cough (note here – if this is the same child she wrote about several weeks ago in the newspaper, it was a fully-vaccinated child). Five children in Australia have died in the past 20 months predominantly in areas where people are not being vaccinated because of dangerous, disgusting, disgraceful information from people like Meryl Dorey.
Below is the letter the parent I was talking to you about wrote to the station. She was one of the first callers and after she had been hung up on (Tracey seems to do this to anyone she disagrees with), there were no other pro-choice callers allowed through.
Anyone with half a brain can see how discriminatory you have been in this whole discussion on vaccination. But that just goes to show what all the intelligent discerning listeners already know - and that is that you are an incompetent journalist.
The mainstream media is full of idiots who do as they are told and they are brainwashed by other mainstream lines of misinformation thoughout their careers. You are well and truly entrenched in this insidious vortex and for that I am so saddened, for you and the many children and families you are misguiding.
I personally know people who you work for, who are high profile, highly respected and, they as parents are intelligent, informed professionals who have made choices for their children by not vaccinating and looking at safe alternatives. Obviously there will be no names becuase of your vitriolic attack on people who actually have done their research and don't just believe what they hear from people like you and other misinformed ingnoramus mainstream media who are funded by big pharma companies.
You are the most ignorant woman I have had the displeasure to listen to and you make Karl Sanderlands look like a guru journalist. I laugh when you say and keep saying that you don't discriminate but so far, you have hung up on and talked over anyone who has called in or been interviewed on the other side of vaccinations and no doubt are vetting and only putting on air a ratio on the topic that suits your "Fair" approach to covering such an emotional and important issue.
And you seem to have a hearing problem. No one so far has said they are anti vaccination including myself when you interviewed me and then told everyone that I was anti vaccination.....I am as is Mery Dorey pro choice and pro information. I am against the way parents are not informed of the definite and recurring complications associated with vaccinations.