Dr. Andrew Wakefield Warns: “This Is Not A Vaccine, It Is Irreversible Genetic Modification”
Who is Dr. Andrew Wakefield?
In 2013, biologist Dr. Brian Hooker received a call from a Senior Scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who led the agency’s 2004 study on the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and its link to autism.
The scientist, Dr. William Thompson, confessed that the CDC had omitted crucial data in their final report that revealed a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. Over several months, Dr. Hooker records the phone calls made to him by Dr. Thompson who provides the confidential data destroyed by his colleagues at the CDC.
Dr. Hooker enlists the help of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist falsely accused of starting the anti-vax movement when he first reported in 1998 that the MMR vaccine may cause autism. In his ongoing effort to advocate for children’s health, Wakefield directs this documentary examining the evidence behind an appalling cover-up committed by the government agency charged with protecting the health of American citizens.
If you’ve heard Dr. Wakefield’s name, and you probably have, you’ve heard two tales. You’ve heard that Dr. Wakefield is a charlatan, an unethical researcher, and a huckster who was “erased” from the British medical registry and whose 1998 article on autism and gastrointestinal disease was “retracted” by a leading medical journal. You’ve also heard a very different story, that Dr. Wakefield is a brilliant and courageous scientist, a compassionate physician beloved by his patients, and a champion for families with autism and vaccine injury. What’s the truth?
Background on The Controversy
Dr. Wakefield graduated from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School of the University of London in 1981; he was one in the fourth generation of his family to study medicine at that teaching hospital. He pursued a career in gastrointestinal surgery with a specialty in inflammatory bowel disease. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1985 and was accepted into the Royal College of Pathologists in 2001. He held academic positions at the Royal Free Hospital and has published over 140 original scientific articles, book chapters, and invited scientific commentaries.
In the early 1990s, Dr. Wakefield began to study a possible link between the measles virus and bowel disease. He published a 1993 study, “Evidence of persistent measles virus infection in Crohn’s disease”1 and coauthored a 1995 article published in The Lancet, “Is measles vaccine a risk factor for inflammatory bowel disease?” At roughly the same time, Dr. Wakefield wrote an unpublished 250-page manuscript reviewing available scientific literature on the safety of measles vaccines. He was rapidly emerging as one of the world’s experts on measles vaccination.
In 1996, an attorney, Solicitor Barr of the law firm Dawbarns, contacted Dr. Wakefield to ask if he would serve as an expert in a legal case on behalf of children injured by vaccines containing the measles virus. The lawyer was bringing the suit on behalf of parents who alleged that vaccines had caused their children’s disabilities, including autism. Six months before this, and independent of the litigation effort, parents of children with autism and severe gastrointestinal symptoms began contacting Dr. Wakefield because of his publications on the measles vaccine, asking for help for their children’s pain and suffering, which they believed was vaccine-induced. Dr. Wakefield made two major, but separate, decisions at about this time, to try to help the families dealing with autism and gastrointestinal problems, and to become an expert in the legal case regarding vaccines and autism.
The Meaning of The Wakefield Prosecution
What, then, was this high-profile prosecution really about? If there was no scientific fraud, no undisclosed financial conflicts of interest, no ethical breaches in performing tests on sick children, and no complaints from patients or their families, then what was the big deal? Did the international scandal and multi-million dollar prosecution proceed merely to chastise a doctor for drawing blood from children at a birthday party, with their consent and their parents’ consent? Of course not.
Dr. Wakefield was, and remains, a dissident from medical orthodoxy. The medical establishment subjected him to a modern day medical show trial for his dissent. Dr. Wakefield’s research raised fundamental doubts about the safety of vaccines and the etiology of autism. Dr. Wakefield was punished for his temerity to caution the public about vaccine risks and to urge them to use their own judgment. Dr. Wakefield was punished for upholding vaccination choice.
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