OK, here's what Wakefield has to say, same paper, copied and pasted again.
"Ministers have only themselves to blame for the latest furore
(Filed: 15/08/2004)
Dr Andrew Wakefield, who raised fears about the safety of the MMR vaccine, argues that patronising parents with spin simply alienates them.
Each time the Department of Health announces a change in the childhood vaccine programme, one minor consequence is a rash of telephone calls from concerned parents to the charity Visceral for which I work.
Last week's announcement of the likely introduction of the new five-in-one combined diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, haemophilus influenza (Hib) and polio vaccine was been no exception. In spite of assurances from Whitehall officials and ministers responsible for public health, a large proportion of the British public is apparently unconvinced of either the safety of, or the necessity for, this change.
Why is it that the Department of Health seems unable to persuade the public that it is doing the right thing?
First, stop treating the British people like idiots. They are not; the people to whom we speak at Visceral have usually conducted their own internet inquiries, have spoken to friends and colleagues and not only ask sophisticated questions but are perfectly capable of understanding a complex answer.
Second, don't over-simplify and don't tell lies or "spin" the facts, however good the motive.
The first rule of public relations is to tell the truth; it seems this has been forgotten. Dr David Salisbury, the head of immunisation at the Department of Health, speaking on television on Tuesday, said the new combination vaccine was completely safe. This was a mistake. Everyone accepts that no medical intervention is without some risk. Furthermore, a summary of the adverse reactions experienced with this vaccine in Canada is already circulating widely on the internet.
Instead of issuing blanket assurances, public health officials should explain and quantify the risks within the context and limitations of the safety studies that have been performed. Parents understand risk. Instinctively, they weigh risk every time they send their children to an adventure playground, or consent to their participation in a contact sport.
Notably, Dr Salisbury was instrumental in the introduction of the Immravax and Pluserix brands of MMR in this country in 1988. No doubt he was equally reassuring about their safety then. The fact that these vaccines were subsequently withdrawn due to an unacceptably high rate of meningitis does not inspire confidence.
Alarmingly, Dr Salisbury went on to state in his television interviews, without any medical or scientific basis in fact, that children could safely be given 1,000 vaccines at once. The Times followed up with the headline on Wednesday, "Experts call for six-in-one jabs". Meanwhile, in a sobering article by Michael Smith of The Daily Telegraph, Professor Simon Wesseley - previously a sceptic on the existence of a Gulf War illness - confirmed to the public inquiry on Gulf War Syndrome that not only were vaccines the culprit, but also that "the more vaccines you received, the more likely you were to suffer ill health".
Dr Salisbury's transparent confusion of fact with personal opinion reflects a failure to grasp that for adverse reactions with combination vaccines, the risk of the whole is likely to be greater than the sum of the parts. This is particularly the case with live viral vaccines where interference between viruses has the potential to alter risk profoundly.
Also, during his interviews, Dr Salisbury claimed that the shift to mercury-free vaccines was almost irrelevant, as the amount of mercury present was so small as to present no danger. By contrast, one of Dr Salisbury's American colleagues, Dr Neal Halsey - upon the belated realisation of the true quantity of mercury in many childhood vaccines - was refreshingly honest, if also alarming in his exposure of unacceptable regulatory incompetence. "From the beginning, I saw thimerosal as something different," he said in 2002. "It was the first strong evidence of a causal association with neurological impairment. I was very concerned."
Dr Halsey, who is one of the architects of US vaccine policy, then explained the failure to calculate the total mercury burden to which a baby was exposed as more vaccines were introduced. "My first reaction was simply disbelief, which was the reaction of almost everybody involved in vaccines," he said. "In most vaccine containers, thimerosal is listed as a mercury derivative, a hundredth of a per cent.
"And what I believed, and what everybody else believed, was that it was truly a trace, a biologically insignificant amount. My honest belief is that if the labels had had the mercury content in micrograms, this would have been uncovered years ago. But the fact is, no one did the calculation."
The next few years are likely to see the introduction of ever greater numbers of vaccines and the possibility of using combination vaccines containing up to 16 different infectious diseases, is already being discussed in the US. In such a fast-changing environment, public confidence in public healthcare policy is crucial. Yet in the eyes of many, the system is fatally flawed.
There is a widespread perception that this policy is compromised by commercial interests; vaccines are a multi-billion pound business and drug companies, with their powerful political connections, are perceived by many as pursuing vaccine development in the private, and not the public interest.
Unfortunately there is no way of reassuring the public on this point, since the system of checks and balances that should operate has failed, and the organs of vaccine development, safety, licensing and promotion, are hopelessly intertwined. These functions are separate responsibilities that should never be compromised by fuzzy boundaries, overlapping memberships and close, even financial, relations with the pharmaceutical companies.
Until this situation is corrected, there is a very grave danger that the Department of Health will succeed in completely destroying the nation's confidence in the public health system. The consequences of this are likely to be grave. Those of us involved in directly addressing parental concerns and researching possible vaccine adverse reactions are affirmed in our resolve by the often dogmatic, high-handed and alarmingly unscientific response of those in public health, to genuine issues of safety.
Andrew Wakefield is employed by Visceral, the medical research charity that supports research into autism and bowel disease."