Why did Wakefield falsely reported that a gruelling five-day battery of invasive and distressing procedures performed on the kids - including anaesthesia, ileocolonoscopies, lumbar punctures, MRI brain scans, EEGs, radioactive drinks and x-rays - proposed for the lawsuit, was approved by the Royal Free's ethics committee?
This is utter bollocks too. And what is a 'radioactive drink' when it is at home? Do you mean barium sulphate as used in barium meals by any chance?
You appear to have confused project 172-96 with the Lancet paper - which is surprising if you have read the Walker-Smith appeal document. From the appeal document;
i) None of the five clinicians involved in the investigation of the Lancet children who gave evidence to the panel considered that they were following Project 172-96.
ii) None of the children fitted the hypothesis to be tested under Project 172-96, in that none of them had both received a single or double vaccine and had developed disintegrative disorder. The great majority had received MMR vaccine and been diagnosed with autism.
iii) No parent was required to sign either the consent form in the proposals submitted to the Ethics Committee or in the revised form approved by it. With one exception (child 2 ? see paragraph 34 below) the only consent forms signed were for diagnostic colonoscopy and the additional research biopsies approved in September 1995.
iv) In every case investigations were followed by a discharge letter prepared by Dr. Casson which set out a diagnosis of the child's condition and by a recommendation for treatment. In some cases, the treatment produced an apparent marked improvement in gastrointestinal symptoms and behaviour.
v) Dr. Pegg was not the only responsible person to whom Professor Walker-Smith stated that the investigations were clinically indicated; he told Mr. Else, Chief Executive of the Royal Free NHS Trust that they were, as Mr. Else confirmed to Dr. Wakefield on 4th September 1996; he gave a lecture at the Wellcome Trust on 20th December 1996 in which he spoke of the investigations and gastrointestinal diagnoses of the first seven Lancet children; on 6th February 1997, he wrote to Dr. O'Connor, a Consultant in Public Health Medicine responsible for funding the referrals of children 6 and 7 to him, enclosing a five page explanation of the rationale, aims and potential therapeutic implications of the investigations, in which he and Dr. Wakefield set out the clinical justification for them. Although the latter document was described by the GMC as "defensive" it was never suggested to Professor Walker-Smith that he deliberately misled his interlocutors about his intention.
vi) Professor Walker-Smith had no rational motive to begin research before it was authorised, carry it out in breach of the requirements of the Ethics Committee after it was authorised or deliberately to mislead the Ethics Committee and others about his intention. Unlike Dr. Wakefield, he was agnostic or cautious about the claimed link between MMR and autism and gastrointestinal disorders. On 29th and 31st July 1997 he wrote privately to Dr. Wakefield to express his and Dr. Murch's concern that their professional reputation would be damaged by association with work prematurely leaked to the media.
vii) As Miss Glynn accepts, a clinical protocol can, in principle, prescribe multiple identical investigations into patients with complex and intractable problems in an attempt to diagnose their condition.