to think that there is a witch hunt against Andrew Wakefield?

[MagalyZz]

I just can't believe that they're still gunning for this guy!?

Whatever you make of his research, it WAS his research and he found what he found and he should be allowed to "suggest a link"

I have a child on the spectrum who had the MMR and I do not think the MMR had anything to do with it, but I do believe Dr Wakefield that a tiny percentage of people do react very badly to this vaccine.

Leave the guy alone ffs!!

Would be interested to hear how you get on Leonie. I am going to complain to the GMC too.

Came across this the other day on GFCF diet effect on autistic children plus notifying increased urinary peptides - this is part of what Wakefield has been saying for years.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19917211

Also I keep reading references to this book which documents the history of peanut allergy and apparently talks about the use of highly refined peanut oil in pharmaceuticals including vaccines which could be linked. Yikes.

I haven't read the book but I have come across references to the vaccine/peanut oil thing before.

www.peanutallergyepidemic.com/

Might start a thread on it as I would be interested to hear if anyone has read this book.

If you do find out more re: peanut allergy that would be interesting, beachcomber.

Interesting to see gf/cf stuff being found to be beneficial. As you say, wakefield was there at the beginning of this train of thought.

It is apparently accepted.in some circles now, although I only ever come across docs and dietitians who roll their eyes whenever I suggest it has helped dd1... (and it has helped her hugely, speech onset was post gf/cf)

Haven't had time to look into the peanut oil thing, but if I do and start a thread I'll link to it here.

Eureka! Scientists discover that some children with autism have gut issues - and it can be detected in their urine.

www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/icl-afc060210.php

Wakefield has been saying this for years.

Shit - they just censored another paper published by Dr Wakefield.

www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v105/n5/full/ajg2010149a.html

Hilary Butler as usual doesn't pull any punches and has called it 'daylight robbery'.

www.beyondconformity.co.nz/_blog/Hilary%27s_Desk/post/GSK_smacks_UK_Health_Secretary%27s_hand/

...but all these very valid points still do not take away the fact that Andrew Wakefield made a sweeping statement based on a study of just 12 children. You cannot take any findings from a study that small and extrapolate it to an entire population. Andrew Wakefield was an experienced researcher and would have known this.

Read the research papers of his and others but don't simply take the findings as gospel. Whats sort of study was it?
Do the findings support the hypothesis?
How was the research done?
How much of a populations sample did it take?

Simply quoting the headlines says nothing apart from implying that this is all you read. No - you need to read the whole thing because it's surprising how crap research is sometimes - even from experienced researchers.

But Wakefield didn't make a statement based just on the Lancet study. I know that is what gets reported in the media but that is not the reality.

Wakefield had been working on the area of Crohn's disease and measles, especially atypical measles expoure, for years. He had looked at the relationship between IBS and ulcerative colitis too. He published several (I don't know the exact number off the top of my head) papers on the asssociation of bowel disease and viral exposure. He had been looking at how a close temporal exposure to viruses such as measles and mumps affects the incidence of bowel disease in populations.

When he started to examine the possible role of exposure via vaccination, he examined the safety data and safety trials for the MMR vaccines. He wrote a 250 page report on what he found and the concerns that he had with the triple vaccine. He alerted the DoH to his concerns and tried on repeated occasions to meet with them to discuss the issue. They refused.

The Lancet report does only contain the findings of 12 children, but by the time it was published the Royal Free team had examined many more children (again I don't have the exact figure without going to look it up but we are talking about more than 100 children here).

The Lancet study is very often misrepresented. The Lancet study was a typical case series study and was intended to document the discovery of a type of bowel inflammation that had not been seen before. The study clearly called for more research.

He examines some of these things in this paper www.ima.org.il/imaj/ar99nov11.pdf

I think it is a bit rude to suggest that we only read headlines btw because we happen to have linked to a couple of articles we have found of interest .

I come across a lot of people critizing Wakefield and I find they very often have not read either his work or the epidemiological studies which pretend to challenge it.

I already posted this on another thread but I thought it might interest Leonie so am going to copy it here. Might start a thread on it actually.

Ok - I thought I had seen just about everything but this really does take the .

The FDA is fast tracking a drug which may be of benefit to children with autism because it helps them digest protein. (Casein free/gluten free diet anyone??)

In an amazing turnabout (now that there is a potential profit treatment) it would appear that mainstream medicene has suspected a link between autism and the gut 'for years' .

abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/health&id=7353260

clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00881452?term=NCT00881452&rank=1

So at the same time as the doctor who first brought the relationship between autism/the gut/impaired protein digestion to public attention is being struck off, the FDA is validating his findings.

There is a pattern here, now that Wakefield is supposedly out of the picture, his work is going to be hijacked and used to generate profit by the very people who have vilified him.

Whilst any treatment that may help the suffering of these children is welcome, this sort of blatant hypocrisy is hugely cynical and utterly despicable. This is double speak on the part of the scientific community.

They are going to 'discover' that many children with autism have impaired meythlation which is helped by supplementing with vitamin B12 no doubt in not very long.

In the meantime they are erasing Wakefield's published studies from public record so that people can't go back and check up and what he said and when.

www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v105/n5/full/ajg2010149a.html

Apologies if anyone thought I was implying that they only read the headlines here. The fact remains though that much research is crap and many people get no further than reading the sweeping and hysteric (sometimes) headlines which accompany it. My point is that people need to read the research for themselves and then decide how well the study was done because sometimes you can pick holes in research which porports to show x, y or z and find it shows nothing of the kind once you take into account bias, sampling, confounding principles etc etc. Otherwise we can be easily fooled into believing anything.

Andrew Wakefield was a serious and experienced researcher and doctor and I know he published some excellent research prior to this whole debacle - personally I'd like to see the Press in the dock.

However, he has made a couple of very dodgy claims regarding what he has found - one claim in a colour supplement - not in a peer reviewed journal. It all makes him very maverick like - and please note I am posting no opinion here about whether or not his findings were wrong or right. Personally from what I've read I don't think he has totally proved his point and certainly nob ody else has been able to replicate his findings - hell even his own research team can't decide what they found - saying they found one thing and then later retracting it.

My son is autistic - he had the MMR but the signs of autism were there long before. He has no bowel problems though and I accept that vaccines although safe for most children may well affect a tiny minority of children adversely - that's how medicine works - nobody can ever say something is 100% safe. I am quite willing to believe that some children have been badly affected.

The point is whether he followed standard scientific practice when he put together his research, and the suggestion is that he didn't. That's bad.

i think it is wrong for anyone to be blaming the return of measles epidemic on andrew wakefield, the govt. could have bought back the single vaccine at any time. they only went with the mmr when india found they could make the single vaccine cheaper than we were making it. andrew wakefield has been scapegoated. this is all about money