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The Lies About Andrew Wakefield
March 2016
'If the vaccine program is so good, why the dirty tactics? Why the straw man? Vaccine safety and effectiveness is a messy business: making Wakefield the scapegoat won't work much longer.'
This morning Age of Autism re-posts a brief article published last year about the key allegations against Andrew Wakefield, which have been long disproven but go on being endless recycled by a mainstream media in the pay of, and intimidated by, the pharmaceutical industry.
By John Stone
Before yesterday morning I had not heard of ‘Upworthy’ which according to Wiki is a “website for viral content” founded by Eli Pariser (Chairman of AVAAZ, pictured) and Peter Koechley (former managing editor of 'The Onion'), for which Kim Kellerher of 'Wired' is also a board member. A presentation “curated” by Adam Mordecai and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation states:
"After years of controversy and making parents mistrust vaccines, along with collecting $674,000 from lawyers who would benefit from suing vaccine makers, it was discovered he had made the whole thing up. The Lancet publicly apologized and reported that further investigation led to the discovery that he had fabricated everything."
What, of course, this does not tell you is that the senior author and clinician in the paper, Prof John Walker-Smith, who also compiled eleven of the twelve case histories appealed to the English High Court over the GMC findings and was completely exonerated nearly three years ago – Walker-Smith, unlike Wakefield, was funded to appeal. All that ‘Upworthy’ are doing is playing the same trick as CNN and Wiki – which I reported on last year - and peddling disproven stories without mentioning that they have been disproven.
CNN, having cited wiki, blocked the following comment:
But this is a flawed account. The findings were confirmed by both histopathologists in the paper subsequent to the hearing. [See also here]
When the Deer/BMJ findings came under the scrutiny of Dr David Lewis in November 2011 they were forced to re-trench (reported in Nature):
“But he (Bjarnason) says that the forms don't clearly support charges that Wakefield deliberately misinterpreted the records.
"The data are subjective. It's different to say it's deliberate falsification," he says.
“Deer notes that he never accused Wakefield of fraud over his interpretation of pathology records…
“Fiona Godlee, the editor of the BMJ, says that the journal's conclusion of fraud was not based on the pathology but on a number of discrepancies between the children's records and the claims in the Lancet paper…”
Although Godlee had previously stated in February 2011:
“The case we presented against Andrew Wakefield that the1998 Lancet paper was intended to mislead was not critically reliant on GP records”. It is primarily based on Royal Free hospital records, including histories taken by clinicians, and letters and other documents received at the Royal Free from GPs and consultants."
But it is clear that the judge who presided over Walker-Smith's exoneration and reviewed the Lancet paper in detail could not find any evidence of this. His one major quibble was over the statement about ethical approval in the paper which Walker-Smith says he did not see - however this is accurate too.
"Ethical approval and consent
"Investigations were approved by the Ethical Practices Committee of the Royal Free Hospital NHS Trust, and parents gave informed consent."
The paper did not have ethical approval and consent, and did not need it because it was simply a review of patient data (which was what was on the tin). The procedures needed ethical approval and consent and had them.
So Wiki does not tell you any of this but repeats an account that is long disproven.
Having considerable respect for the good works of AVAAZ I think it is a great pity that Mr Pariser - author also of 'The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You' - should be associated with this travesty, and he really ought to look into it. It seems that the entire defence of the vaccine program hinges on the false claims that have been made about the Wakefield paper (which did not even purport to prove that vaccines cause autism). If the vaccine program is so good, why the dirty tactics? Why the straw man? Vaccine safety and effectiveness is a messy business: making Wakefield the scapegoat won't work much longer.
John Stone is UK Editor of Age of Autism.
Posted by Age of Autism at March 26, 2016 at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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"Before yesterday morning I had not heard of ‘Upworthy’ which according to Wiki is a “website for viral content” founded by Eli Pariser (Chairman of AVAAZ, pictured) and Peter Koechley (former managing editor of 'The Onion'), for which Kim Kellerher of 'Wired' is also a board member. A presentation “curated” by Adam Mordecai and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation"
Here are the comments of Sharyl Attkisson's "TED TALK" on "Astro-turf" .. a well-funded practice devising false claims meant to "controversialize" persons and issues they want to discredit .. such as .. vaccines causing autism .. on the subject of Wiki-pedia:
"Wikipedia is an "Astro-turfer's" dream come true. Billed as a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit .. the reality can't be more different.
Anonymous Wikipedia editors control and co-opt pages on behalf of special interests .. they forbid and reverse edits that go against their agenda .. by skewing and deleting information .. a blatant violation of Wikipedia's own established policies .. with impunity and always to the detriment of the poor schlub who actually believes anyone can edit Wikipedia .. only to discover they are banned from correcting even the simplest factual inaccuracies.
When author Philip Roth tried to correct Wikipedia's misrepresentation of a character in his book .. Wikipedia's editors refused his correction .. claiming Roth was not a "credible" source on his own work.
Not long after .. Wikipedia suffered a scandal when Wikipedia officials got caught offering a P.R. service's skewed and edited information on behalf of paid publicity seeking clients in clear opposition to Wikipedia's supposed practices.
All of this may be why .. when a medical study looked at medical conditions described on Wikipedia's pages and compared them to actual peer reviewed research .. Wikipedia contradicted medical research 90% of the time.
You may never trust what you read on Wikipedia again .. nor should you."
Gee .. being found to be WRONG .. 90% of the time .. is a pretty damning track record .. even for an "astroturfer".
Posted by: Bob Moffit | March 26, 2016 at 07:11 AM