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!!

milly, the parents of the children he "experimented" on supported him. What does that tell you?

Wannbe sadly at least one child has died of measles in the last 10 years news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4871728.stm

He took blood samples from children at his own son'd birthday party for 5 quid each. For that alone he should have been struck off.

I will ask again, do you think it is acceptable that someone else's children were subjected to lumbar punctures purely for research purposes?

No No NO! highly inethical - why has it taken them this long to strike him off?

you don't perform procedures like hat (with all concomitant risks) without a really good reason.

Wannabe
There was a second death in 2008

And yes you can get singles if you are worried about the vaccine available to you on the NHS... I read an article about the rise in autism cases in Japan yet they dont give the MMR jab anymore...what exactly makes the Wakefield supporters think his evidence has ANY credibility?

oh, two deaths.

How many died of flu?

Leonie, children cannot give consent to medical procedures. The parents who were asked for their consent were asked to sign a consent form that was wholly inadequate and did not outline the risks of any of the procedures. He set up the study in order to prove a result that would earn him money and was therefore eager to get participants. Presumably he did not make the parents aware of this when he was trying to get the use of their children.

So yes, I think he forced children to undergo invasive and painful procedures that they did not need in order to help line his pocket.

Consent form here: www.circare.org/consents/wakefield_consent_19960916.pdf

He came up with a theory. Over a period of 12 years he has failed to provide research that supports that theory, not has he chosen to withdraw the theory.

The research he did conduct was flawed and carried out in an unethical manner.

Why should the GMC turn a blind eye to his actions?

Erm ...

Not many children have died of measles in the past 10 years. Could this possibly be to do with the fact that most of them have been vaccinated?

Sorry, you can't seriously be arguing against MMR by saying that there have been very few measles deaths in the last 10 years.

Flu? What the bejesus has flu got to do with the debate? Here have a straw to clutch at!

no rrw you can't. The mumps vaccine is no longer manufactured iirc and singles are not available on the nhs.

Mmr was withdrawn in japan due to nurological damage believed to be caused by the mumps element of the vaccine afaik.

Still ok to vaccinate every child blindly regardless of risk level though.

Of course nobody ever died before the vaccines came about did they

Autism is "on the rise" in nations which rely on computer technology perhaps because the autistic men and women are making seriously good money using their skills, marrying and having children? As opposed to being considered unemployable.

Who linked the Silicon Valley article, was it Peachy? That was fascinating.

Wannabe there hadn't been any deaths for 12 years and then as the vaccination levels dropped there were 2 deaths in 2 years. Two deaths that may well have directly resulted from extremely poorly conducted research by someone who had very serious undeclared conflicts of interests.
I am not sure that the parents of the children who died would think "oh, two deaths" was really an adequate response!

He did lumbar punctures without ethical approval That is not OK. That is either breathtaking ignorance, breathtaking arrogance or both.

WannaBe, there has been a measles death here, but the risk is that is vaccination drops below certain levels (and its teetering on the brink) then the background reservoir of measles gets out of control, so instead of little sporadic outbreaks here and there you get proper epidemics and significant numbers of child deaths.

The whole point of MMR is to try and get to state where we can get rid of these diseases once and for all. Mumps encephalitis can and does kill.

Stopping the reservoir growing by vaccinating toddlers is an important (and extremely logical) necessity of campaigns who's goal is ultimately to eradicate these diseases.

Do you really think since his 'evidence' nobody else has ever carried out similar research? Where is their conclusive evidence the MMR jab causes autism?

bibbity the argument is that the measles take-up rate has dropped signifficantly enough to cause major epidemics of measles. So it would automatically follow that signifficant amounts of deaths have occurred. They haven't.

The comparison is made with flu because signifficant amounts of children do die of flu each year, and yet there is not this mass hysteria to vaccinate all children against the flu virus.

No-one is saying that no children should be vaccinated against mmr. What people are saying is that for some children who have compromised immune systems already, overloading their systems with several live viruses at a time could be detrimental to them.

But it's easy to ignore that if you're not the parent of a child who has a compromised immune system or whose child has regressed following vaccination.

So he never received any funding from people interested in proving a link between MMR and autism, Leonie?

I don't know what other thread you're talking about.

If they start striking people off for conducting research that turns out to be wrong, we won't have any academic doctors left soon.

Southwall wasn't struck off for his shenanigans with consent forms over the NCAP incubator - the one that killed premature babies....

YABVU.

The man's a money grabbing charlatan, with seriously questionable ethics, whose inappropriate scaremongering rubbish research did untold damage to the vaccination programme. Damage that is ongoing.

I can't believe it's taken this long for him to be struck off.

I wasn't aware that take up rates had dropped so low as to cause major epidemics. There have been outbreaks, yes, we had one in my dc school the winter before last. One mum with a girl in my dd's class had three of her four children in hospital with it. Still, they didn't die, so no harm done eh?

It actually doesn't matter if he was right.

All this debate about singles versus MMR, autism being worse than measles deaths, etc, is actually not relevant to the GMC decision.

What matters is how his research was conducted. Medical research has hugely strict guidelines for very good reasons - noone wants another thalidomide, for example.

He did not meet these guidelines.