- Order:
- Duration: 6:12
- Published: 18 Dec 2008
- Uploaded: 23 Mar 2011
- Author: BMJmedia
With the advent of online publication, some healthcare journals are transforming from traditional subscription-based and pay-per-view access to open access for some or all of their content.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Andrew Wakefield (born 1957) is a British former surgeon and medical researcher known for his fraudulent data manipulation in a well-publicised 1998 report in The Lancet that fuelled claims of a causative connection between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, autism and autistic enterocolitis. The latter controversial term was created by Wakefield to describe an unproven form of inflammatory bowel disease.
Four years after the publication of the study, the findings of other researchers failed to confirm or reproduce Wakefield's. Deer said that Wakefield had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing". However, by that time, Wakefield's study and public recommendations against the use of the combined MMR vaccine were linked to a steep decline in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom and a corresponding rise in measles cases, resulting in serious illness and three fatalities. Wakefield has continued to defend his research and conclusions, saying there was no fraud, hoax or profit motive.
Wakefield is no longer licensed in the UK as a physician, and is not licensed in the US. of the autism advocacy group, Generation Rescue, who wrote the foreword for Wakefield's autobiography, Callous Disregard, and believes her son's autism is due to vaccines.
In February 1998, a paper written by Wakefield and 12 other doctors about 12 autism spectrum children was published in The Lancet. In the published Lancet summary, known as the "interpretation", the authors wrote:
:"We identified associated gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression in a group of previously normal children, which was generally associated in time with possible environmental triggers."
These possible triggers were reported to be MMR in eight cases, and measles infection in one. The paper was instantly controversial, leading to widespread publicity in the UK and the convening of a special panel of the UK's Medical Research Council the following month. According to the BBC, "He told journalists it was a 'moral issue' and he could no longer support the continued use of the three-in-one jab for measles, mumps and rubella. 'Urgent further research is needed to determine whether MMR may give rise to this complication in a small number of people,' Dr Wakefield said at the time." He suggested parents should opt for single jabs against measles, mumps and rubella, separated by gaps of one year.
In December 2001, Wakefield resigned from the Royal Free Hospital, saying, "I have been asked to go because my research results are unpopular."
: "We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between (the) vaccine and autism, as the data were insufficient. However the possibility of such a link was raised, and consequent events have had major implications for public health. In view of this, we consider now is the appropriate time that we should together formally retract the interpretation placed upon these findings in the paper, according to precedent." Additionally, his laboratory had failed to find measles virus in the children.
:(i) Had dishonestly and irresponsibly spread fear that the MMR vaccine might cause autism in some children, "even though he knew that his own laboratory's tests dramatically contradicted his claims and he knew or ought to have known that there was absolutely no scientific basis at all for his belief that MMR should be broken up into single vaccines."
:(ii) In spreading such fear, also acted dishonestly and irresponsibly, by repeatedly failing to disclose conflicts of interest and/or material information, including his association with contemplated litigation against the manufacturers of MMR and his application for a patent for a vaccine for measles which, if effective, and if the MMR vaccine had been undermined and/or withdrawn on safety grounds, would have been commercially very valuable.
:(iii) Caused medical colleagues serious unease by carrying out research tests on vulnerable children outside the terms or in breach of the permission given by an ethics committee, in particular by subjecting those children to highly invasive and sometimes distressing clinical procedures and thereby abusing them.
:(iv) Has been unremittingly evasive and dishonest in an effort to cover up his wrong-doing.
Proceedings continued for two years, but in December 2006, Deer reported figures obtained from the Legal Services Commission showing that it had paid £435,643 in undisclosed fees to Wakefield for him to build a case against the MMR vaccine,
Within days of Deer's report, Wakefield dropped all his libel actions a former graduate student, who appeared in Deer's programme, later testified that Wakefield ignored laboratory data which conflicted with his hypothesis. An independent investigation of a collaborating laboratory questioned the accuracy of the data underpinning Wakefield's claims. Ordered investigations "without the requisite paediatric qualifications" including colonoscopies, colon biopsies and lumbar punctures ("spinal taps") on his research subjects without proper approval and contrary to the children's clinical interests, when these diagnostic tests were not indicated by the children's symptoms or medical history. "Act[ed] 'dishonestly and irresponsibly' in failing to disclose ... how patients were recruited for the study". "Conduct[ed] the study on a basis which was not approved by the hospital's ethics committee." Purchased blood samples - for £5 each - from children present at his son's birthday party, which Wakefield joked about in a later presentation.
Wakefield denied the charges; acted against the interests of his patients, and "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his controversial research. On 24 May 2010 he was struck off the United Kingdom medical register; co-author John Walker-Smith was also struck from the medical register, while junior author Simon Murch was cleared. Deer, funded by The Sunday Times of London and Channel 4 television network, said that, based on examination of the medical records of the 12 children in the original study, data that Wakefield used was fraudulent, because:
In an accompanying editorial, BMJ editors said:
Clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare ... Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield. Is it possible that he was wrong, but not dishonest: that he was so incompetent that he was unable to fairly describe the project, or to report even one of the 12 children's cases accurately? No. A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was gross. Moreover, although the scale of the GMC's 217 day hearing precluded additional charges focused directly on the fraud, the panel found him guilty of dishonesty concerning the study's admissions criteria, its funding by the Legal Aid Board, and his statements about it afterwards.
In a BMJ follow-up article on 11 January 2011, The Washington Post reported that Deer said that Wakefield predicted he "could make more than $43 million a year from diagnostic kits" for the new condition, autistic enterocolitis. According to Deer's report in BMJ, the ventures, Immunospecifics Biotechnologies Ltd and Carmel Healthcare Ltd—named after Wakefield’s wife, failed after Wakefield's superiors at University College London's medical school gave him a two-page letter that said:
"We remain concerned about a possible serious conflict of interest between your academic employment by UCL, and your involvement with Carmel ... This concern arose originally because the company's business plan appears to depend on premature, scientifically unjustified publication of results, which do not conform to the rigorous academic and scientific standards that are generally expected."
WebMD reported on Deer's BMJ report, saying that the $43 million predicted yearly profits would come from marketing kits for "diagnosing patients with autism" and that "the initial market for the diagnostic will be litigation-driven testing of patients with AE [autistic enterocolitis, an unproven condition concocted by Wakefield] from both the UK and the USA".
The following day the editor of a specialist journal, Neurotoxicology, withdrew another Wakefield paper that was in press. The article, which concerned research on monkeys, had already been published online and sought to implicate vaccines in autism.
In an internet radio interview, Wakefield said the BMJ series "was utter nonsense" and denied "that he used the cases of the 12 children in his study to promote his business venture". Although Deer is funded by The Sunday Times and Channel 4, he has filed financial disclosure forms and denies receiving any funding from the pharmaceutical industry, who Wakefield says is paying him. According to CNN, Wakefield said the patent he held was for "an 'over-the-counter nutritional supplement' that boosts the immune system". WebMD reported that Wakefield said he was the victim of "a ruthless, pragmatic attempt to crush any attempt to investigate valid vaccine safety concerns".
Wakefield claims that Deer is a "hit man who was brought in to take [him] down" and that other scientists have simply taken Deer at his word. While on Anderson Cooper 360°, claiming he hadn't read the BMJ articles yet, he denied their validity and denied that Deer had interviewed the families of the children in the study. He also urged viewers to read his book, Callous Disregard, which he claimed would explain why he was being targeted, to which Anderson Cooper replied: "But, sir, if you're lying, then your book is also a lie. If your study is a lie, your book is a lie." He also noted that Wakefield has previously sued him and lost.
ABC News Channel WWAY3 said:
: "Since Dr. Andrew Wakefield's study was released in 1998, many parents have been convinced the measels, mumps and rubella vaccine could lead to autism. But that study may have done more harm than good. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than any year since 1997. More than 90 percent of those infected had not been vaccinated, or their vaccination status was not known."
Paul Hébert, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) said:
: "There has been a huge impact from the Wakefield fiasco ... This spawned a whole anti-vaccine movement. Great Britain has seen measles outbreaks. It probably resulted in a lot of deaths."
Journalist Brian Deer called for criminal charges to be brought against Wakefield.
Category:MMR vaccine controversy Category:Living people Category:1957 births Category:Date of birth missing (living people) Category:Place of birth missing (living people) Category:British medical researchers Category:British surgeons Category:Alumni of Imperial College London
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.