Andrew Wakefield Struck off

[ShadeofViolet]

here

Leonie I think you have made some very interesting and well-informed comments. You're obviously well researched and a clear thinker.

By oska Wed 26-May-10 09:57:27
A scientific study only finds what its looking for and of course that depends on who's funding the research...

This is from the Guardian report:
"In June 1997, before the paper was published, he [Wakefield] filed a patent as one of the inventors of a vaccine for the elimination of measles virus and for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. In February 1998, the same month as the Lancet paper, he applied for ethical permission to run a trial of a new potential measles vaccine and set up a company called Immunospecifics Biotechnologies Ltd which would produce and sell it. The father of one of the children he had seen with developmental problems and bowel disease would be the managing director. "

AND
"Wakefield, now based in the US, has also been found not to have been open with the Lancet. He did not tell them that £55,000 funding for the study came from the legal aid board. Wakefield was advising Richard Barr, a solicitor who wanted evidence to sue the vaccine manufacturers on behalf of the parents of children with autism. It was a clear conflict of interest and should have been declared."

So oska, doesn't your scepticism extend to Wakefield's scientific study, its far-from-unbiased funding background, and his massive (and undeclared at the time) conflict of interest?

And of course we all know that the Guardian is the puppet newspaper of the government...

By oska Wed 26-May-10 10:14:31
And of course we all know that the Guardian is the puppet newspaper of the government...

ha ha ha
and i thought we were actually attempting an intelligent discussion.
that article reported the findings of the GMC. identical facts were reported in other newspapers. do let me know which one isn't part of the global conspiracy and i'll find a more acceptable link for you.

So, here we have apparently two conflicts on interest, which we could counter-argue about for days.

But when it cuts to the chase of sitting there in the GP surgery - are you still going to take the MMR risk?

The fact remains, there are kids out there with autism and the symptoms have appeared within hours of the jab. www.cryshame.com

well I have met him. he was incredibly nice, interested in DS2 when he had far more important people to deal with and took a great deal oftime to find out if DS2 was getting decent support for his gut issues.

Plus the GFCF diet which his work advocated helped DS2 regain his speech and calm down enormously.

So Ithink it is terribly sad.

FWIW I am also not anti-vac. I just think my Dcs can't cope with them. Which is shit really. I wish someone would investigate children like my son and find out hwat happened to them rather than everyone picking a side and slaying each other

Wakefield was not required to disclose the funding under rules at the time. I think however, it came out at the gmc that horton had known all along. (please note, I can't checkbthis as opting from phone). Horton turned out not to be.so honest, tbh at the gmc. Lots of dodge recollections, then about turns when presented with the truth.

The patent application was to treat bowel disease. The vaccine shot has been spread around by Deer.

i don't think the lancet comes out of this affair particularly well at all. i think the media, and especially the more hysterical columnists, carry a fair amount of culpability for the drop in uptake of the mmr.

but does this excuse Wakefield's dishonest, unethical and irresponsible actions - or indeed mean that he wasn't acting dishonestly, unethically or irresponsibly? of course not. pointing the finger elsewhere doesn't absolve him in the slightest.

By oska Wed 26-May-10 10:20:35
But when it cuts to the chase of sitting there in the GP surgery - are you still going to take the MMR risk?

erm, yes.
most people do.

cryshame is not an objective or balanced source of information.

it may not be objective, but it's still valid. Your feelings about your child are not objecivte, but still valid.

I understand that most people take up MMR, my sisters's kids have, she's a medic and informed. They are fine.

What I said in my first post was that it appears there are kids who are prone and MMR is a trigger - is that reasonable?

Until there is a test to see if my kids are prone, I'm not doing MMR. I'm not anti-vax, we're just doing single shots instead.

Hold on, maranello. You accuse wakefield of something, which a couple.of.posters have refuted. Instead of accepting you may be wrong on that point, otoh move the outposts to another accusation.

This happens.all the time on this debate. People say wakefield said mmr causes autism. It is pointed.out he didn't, and so they move onto the conflict of interest. Again pointed out this is not the case and we move on to the next argument t.

At what point wi people.accept thatwakefield is not the.monster the press have made him out to be?
He shouldn't overtaken blood inane non clinical setting. And he should have tied up the wording on his ethicalapprovals. But that's about it.

And from that point on, I'm with pagwatch. This is a man who was helping children. Children who had been passed over by every other doctor who they saw. Doctors who left them
in unspeakable pain and distress.

But better to focus on arguing hey, because its a more comfortable seeing. Ignore those children, and Tue act they're not getting help.

And that you can't get treatment easily for gut issues in an ASD child.

These debates are exactly like the gmc trial tbh. Start in one place, have your arguments knocked down one by one, keep moving, and trunk end up somewhere entirely unrelated, via a series of lies and deception.

It is sickening, actually. Especially since the original research (you know, the focus of all this) continues to be overlooked.

X posts, Leone

Silverfrog and Leonie - good stuff. Everyone's been wanting to bash Wakefield and of course the establishment are scared, so they send in the big guns to knock him down. What they should have done is thought hey this guy's got a point and continued his research 'ethically' but they are scared at what they will find.

And who suffers? The kids.

And the rest of us go blithly on, being bullied by our GPs to have the vaccination. The same GPs who refuse to see a link and refuse to offer treatment.

Look back in history to see how wrong the medical profession and governments have been. Only when brave people have perservered to challenge perceived wisdom has progress been made. Thalidomide anyone? Mercury in your vaccines? Of course it's safe, the research says so...

at 'Especially since the original research (you know, the focus of all this) continues to be overlooked' REALLY SERIOUSLY?

sigh once again... a group of scientists from Harvard Medical School & Colombia University set out to study EXACTLY what Wakefield had already studied to see if his conclusions held water. The only difference is that they actually got ethical approval for their research and carried it out within the guidelines. This is NOT a huge population study, it deliberately set out to study EXACTLY the subgroup that Wakefield identified. This is what so many non-vaxers have been dying to see and what they keep saying has not been done. IT HAS BEEN DONE.

You can read the piece on NHS online here and it links through to the scientific paper if anyone is interested in reading the whole thing.

For ease though (and I'm sure we all have better things to do), I will quote the lead author of the research, Dr Mady Hornig: "We found no relationship between the timing of MMR and the onset of either gastrointestinal complaints or autism."

I know it's inconvenient, but that is the science, properly researched and reporting accoring to the guidelines.

Comments? (actual informed comments, not anecdotes)

hold on silverfrog, i'm doing my best to keep up with the various strands that are coming up (and i have a sleeping baby in one arm, slowing my typing down, though of course you wouldn't know that! ).

the link from the guardian report about the legal aid funding wasn't "my" accusation. i was addressing oska's scepticism about science funding, given that she uses this as reason to dismiss those studies which don't agree with the Wakefield hypothesis, but doesn't seem to want to apply it to Wakefield or the anti-mmr claims.

i didn't know he wasn't obliged to disclose it under the rules, so thanks. fair enough. but actually my disquiet about it wasn't that he might have broken a rule about full and frank disclosure. it was that his involvement with the lawsuit and the vaccine patent surely sits uneasily with this notion of Wakefield as the altruistic hero doctor fighting big pharma.
(i'd be very keen for big pharma to be subject to much more scrutiny and transparency, too BTW.)

oh, and silverfrog, hope this wasn't aimed at me specifically but your comment about those who "focus on arguing ...[and] Ignore those children" is massively unfair. i happen to believe, as many other people do, that Wakefield has done a huge disservice by distracting attention away from those children who do need help and masses more research and care devoted to them.

great that he listened to parents and took time with them. that can be the mark of a good doctor, yes. it can also be the mark of a charlatan. homeopaths take a good deal of time with their patients. it doesn't mean the science stacks up or that their intentions are honourable.

Why did the government ban single vaccs on NHS? They'd been available for years before then, so why choose to suddenly ban them?

THAT was what forced parents to either have MMR or nothing. Not Wakefield. Wakefield merely said that aspects of MMR needed further investigation - what's wrong with that?

The banning of the only alternative was what caused people to panic and reject MMR.

Of course, the government had to vilify Wakefield and the GMC had to go along with it.

Bring back the singles; problem solved. (Oh but then we'd be questioning the original ban, wouldn't we?)

"Hornig posits that some cases of autism may represent the unfortunate coincidence of genetic vulnerability (first dimension) and exposure to environmental factors (second dimension) at a critical period of brain development (third dimension)"

So a one year old who's brain is still developing, has an environmental factor introduced (MMR), together with a genetic vulnerability may get autism.

Aplogies that my Hornig source is a snippet wikipedia, but looks pretty kosher.

So, until it is standard practice to test for a genetic vulnerability, I'm not supporting MMR.

And of course an NHS report will tow the corporate line.