Martin Walker
The
Survival of the Most Corrupt*
The Verdict, Thursday 28th
January 2010
*The expression often
used by Mr. Herbert Spencer
of the Survival of
the Most Corrupt
is more accurate, and
is sometimes
equally convenient.
With apologies to Darwin and Mr Herbert
Spencer
And so it came
to be that Dr Kumar, the Chairman of the GMC Fitness to Practice Panel trying
Dr Andrew Wakefield, Professor Simon Murch and
Professor Walker-Smith sat without the flicker of a smile on his face, leaning
on the long plastic topped table and read out the verdicts to the many charges.
The Panel found that; most of the children in the Lancet paper had been experimented upon outside the inclusion dates
of research ethical committee approval 172/96. That a number of the children
had been subjected to aggressive procedures not sanctioned by any research
ethics committee. That in most cases parental approval had not been lodged in
the case files and that Dr Wakefield had "treated children with a 'callous
disregard' for the distress and pain that he knew or ought to have known the
children involved might suffer. This latter aside, although repeated by the
media incessantly throughout Thursday night, actually referred to the taking of
a small quantity of blood by a trained professional from 5 healthy children,
whose parents were friends of the Wakefield's; a control sample for a study.
This had nothing to do with the experimental procedures that were supposedly
carried out by Dr Wakefield on the 12 children reviewed in the Lancet paper.
As the
recitation of the crimes of Dr Wakefield came to an end, it appeared as if Dr
Wakefield, had in the mid nineties, been some kind of inhuman Nazi experimenter
practicing on children in the heart of England; an overlooked human vivisector who stalked a large North London hospital
committing serious crimes with the two other criminals in his firm, invisible
to his colleagues and unseen by the hospital administration.
Kumar didn't
have an easy read of the verdict. Feelings ran high. The GMC were unable to
keep order. Muttering began as Kumar's message became clear while he dodged
through the verdict; the microphones working with loud clarity for the first
time in two and a half years. Suddenly one parent exploded in a clutter of bags
and clothing, a scarf and a jacket, she stood up, twisted round a blur of
mustard, shouting as she made her way out of the hearing room. She evaded the the GMC security as they tried to manhandling her. After a
short quiet with Kumar continuing, another parent, dressed attractively in
purples, fury on her face, raged against him, repeating 'the children' over and again. GMC security
did catch up with this diminutive parent and held her bruisingly
in the lift on the way to expelling her from the premises.
The public
gallery began to empty. Then after another five minutes of Kumar's sucrose
voice, a freewheeling free-for-all pushed its way to the door. It was headed by
a straighter than straight parent, one who usually appeared unable to be
aggressive, he remonstrated with the Hearing, like a radical haranguing a
rabble, every word in place, beautifully composed. He informed the panel that
they were the only ones who had behaved unethically, not the doctors who had
tried to care for their children.
Outside again,
the parents drew together and began chanting their message or catching up with
reporters, trying to squeeze the last juice from the media. Jim Moody, Dr
Wakefield's friend and a lawyer a frequent visitor from the US during the
hearing had that day delivered to the GMC an indictment of the prosecution's
central witnesses in the hearing. I thought as I listened to him, he was far
too articulate for a media able only to understand cacophony. Nevertheless they
pretended to listen intently, pointing 57 varieties of recording technology in
his direction. That night I could find not even rubble of his speech in the
broadcast media.
At the end of
the afternoon, in the gathering dusk of the Euston Road, a real treat, the
presence of Andy and Carmel, this time completely in control, without the press
snapping at their heals, walking fast like an escaping Bonny and Clyde but
standing calmly saying exactly what needed to be said but answering no
questions. Of course the media had their own way of portraying even this. Dr
Wakefield became 'an unrepentant doctor', a man who wouldn't take his medicine!
I personally was so pleased that neither Dr Wakefield or Professor Walker-Smith
graced the hearing room with their presence showed proper contempt for the
hearing.
* *
*
It is 10.30 am
on the morning of Thursday 28th January, I'm sitting in the student canteen
inside the University of London on Gower Street. This University is now and has
been for the last hundred years, the hub of science research. The body of
Jeremy Bentham, resides sitting in a glass and wood
exhibition box. The library of the Wellcome Institute
is just round the corner and because of its closeness to the Wellcome Trust, the University has been the recipient of
funds from that body and its original pharmaceutical counterpart, The Wellcome Foundation, for a century. The university was used
for the filming of Silent Witnesses one of the most popular forensic science
detective programmes on British TV. The University College London, has centuries
of science ground into it's very bricks; it was here that Francis Crick studied
on the way to discovering the double helix of DNA.
Ten minutes’
walk up the Euston Road stands the big glass building of the GMC where later in
the day, the panel in the Wakefield, Murch and
Walker-Smith case will announce its verdicts or 'findings on fact' as they
fancifully call them. Here in the glass panelled hearing room, a different kind
of science has been practiced for the last two and a half years; the science of
deception.
We already know,
and some of us have known for a long time, that all the defendants will be
found guilty on almost all the charges. Although the hearing does not begin
until 2.00pm, the cameras are already there in the early morning, like vultures
on rocks. The camera men and reporters, hands stuffed in windcheaters talking
in low voices, with constant nods of the head and shuffling of the feet,
looking determinedly at the pavement. It's very cold in London and especially
so on this part of the Euston Road that is like a canyon down which the wind
whistles.
I was the first
of Dr Wakefield's contingent to arrive. I got to the GMC building early because
I always have a need to sink into the situation to feel that I can get the
measure of atmosphere, to mull it over, long before the proceedings begin. I am
here after following Dr Wakefield's case over five years and attending the
hearing at every sitting over the last two and a half years.
Today I know
will be one of those times that signify a dark night of the soul, for
defendants, parents and campaigners alike. This afternoon the defendants will
be knocked from their horses by rib smashing lance blows, on the ground they
will lie dazed and have to figure whether it is right or even possible to remount
and continue the battle. Parents will contemplate the bleak landscape of their
children's illness without any treatment and with open skepticism
from medical practitioners from whom they seek help. Activists and campaigners
like myself will have to face the melancholic prospect of either continuing the
campaign or slipping away to support apparently more equitable battles.
This particular
battle is a post-modern struggle, one in which the most powerful forces,
multinational companies, reshape the world hand in hand with governments. This
is a struggle from which parents and citizens have been expunged. A blind
struggle, in an age where all the ties between governments and citizens have
been severed, where it is no longer possible for citizens to have any real
effect on either the processes of industrial science or of national politics.
At the same time that Dr Kumar is pulling his verdict out of the hat this
afternoon, a quarter of a mile away near Parliament Square ex-prime minister
Tony Blair will be excusing his role in the killing of 100,000 civilians in
Iraq. Huge and the little crimes are spoken away with 'the people' unable even
to dent the facade of apparent fairness.
Today at the GMC
we all will have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous and organised
fortune, the defendant will have to bend with the wind like trees on the beach
cliffs and smart from the ignorance of the news media. Parents will have to
pretend that they can cope, make themselves strong and hope that help will come
from somewhere for their children; the prospect of no further clinical help is
impossible to contemplate. Activists, scientists, politicos and campaigners -
supporters of truth and science will have to steel themselves to the phlegm
spat from the PCs of snakes like Brian Deer, stand still and take the
belittling mountain of toxic words that he and his blancmange brained
associates will heap belittlingly upon us.
Before I become
too maudlin, however, I have to say that about one thing we can rest assured,
history will prove us right, will turn in our favour. In fact this is a rule
caste in iron, scorned as our truths are now, they will undoubtedly be
recognised in the future; when the science is resurrected, and when the
politics go through sea changes.
* *
*
It's now Friday
morning and I have just gathered enough strength to begin my post for Age of
Autism. Sometimes it's hard to write in the face of such an emotional
maelstrom. Yesterday, the Chairman of the GMC Fitness to Practice Panel, Dr
Kumar, a man who during the hearing refused to answer questions about his
shareholding in GlaxoSmithKline, pronounced on behalf of the multinational drug
companies and the British government that there was no such thing as vaccine
damage and that any parents who claimed that their children had suffered such,
would be treated with scorn and contempt.
Dr Kumar had
been selected as Fitness to Practice Panel Chairman following the outing by
campaigners of the GMC first choice, Professor Dennis McDevitt
who had been a member of the original adverse reactions
sub-committee of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunology (JCVI) that
had manipulated and disguised the reported adverse reactions of the unsafe MMR.
In 1988, McDevitt had declared funding for a Research
fellowship from Glaxo and Smith Kline and French (as
the present day vaccine manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline were then named).
Dr Kumar, also,
thought obviously not in so many words, proclaimed the complete confidence of
the GMC in the medical authority of Brian Deer, the only man in the world to
make a formal complaint against three of Europe's leading gastroenterologists.
Brian Deer has carried out his campaign against Dr Wakefield from the pages of
the Sunday Times, a paper managed and owned by James Murdoch a man who sits on
the board of GlaxoSmithKline. Deer researched his case with the help of
Medico-Legal Investigations a private enquiry company funded solely by The
Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
The panel gave
their verdict after two and a half years partial scrutiny of the case, after
legal aid for the parents claims to be heard in a real court, against vaccine
manufacturers, was denied by High Court judge Sir Nigel Davis, whose brother,
an executive board member of Elsevier the publishers, was on the Board of
GlaxoSmithKline. During the hearing, some of the apparently most authoritative
evidence, not about science, but about conflict of interest, was given by Dr
Richard Horton the editor of the Lancet
one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. The Lancet is owned
by Elsevier and Sir Crispin Davis is Dr Horton's line manager.
Since the
beginning of this GMC charade, I have though that anyone who even entertained a
verdict other than one of guilty for the three defendants, was setting
themselves up for a fall.
* *
*
From 2.00
o'clock onwards, right into the late media evening, the last two and a half
years of conflict over the MMR combined vaccine, was reduced to simplicity
itself. So simple did it all become that I found it almost impossible to
believe that I was hearing about the same hearing in which the prosecution had
produced two and a half years of evidence.
In his
announcement of the verdict Kumar, reduced the whole of the panel's verdict to
an assessment on Wakefield's 'care' for the twelve children written up in the
1998 case review study published in the Lancet. In order to introduce this
paper and the resultant verdict to you in this post, I have to simplify the
hearing and the evidence given during its two and a half years, I ask your
forgiveness for this.
In 2004, six
years after the Lancet paper was
published and nine years after the children cited in the paper had been seen by
clinicians, Brian Deer, the British government, the GMC and all their drug
industry connected supporters made this case:
Dr Wakefield and
colleagues had applied to the research ethics committee at the Royal Free
Hospital to carry out research programme 172/96, this programme was to study
children who had inflammatory bowel disease. Dr Wakefield had also agreed to a
Legal Aid Board funded study of two groups of five children. Dr Wakefield had
published the results of his research into 12 autistic children, under
programme 172/96, in the Lancet in
1998. The paper showed clearly that Dr Wakefield and his colleagues had
included children in this research for whom they did not have ethical committee
approval. That children were given aggressive procedures for which the doctors
did not have ethical committee approval. That experimental research had been
carried out on these 'autistic' but otherwise healthy children, that did not
have bowel disease, without ethical committee approval, nor even in some cases
parental consent. The prosecution frequently tried to show that children who
attended at the RFH, had been garnered by Dr Wakefield in an illicit manner.
Taken the children to the RFH had, the prosecution said, been a way of parents
hoping to rid themselves of the guilt at having autistic children. The
objective of the 'research' upon which the paper was based, was to show that
the MMR vaccination had created 'regressive' autism and the motive of Dr
Wakefield who had engineered the paper and the involvement of the other 11
authors, was to aid the claim of the parents against the three pharmaceutical
companies being sued.
Finally, the
prosecution had said that Dr Wakefield played a part in the clinical treatment
of the children despite the fact that his contract as a researcher forbade him
to do so. Further the prosecution claimed that while Legal Aid Board money had
been used to fund Dr Wakefield's work he had made no declaration of this
conflict of interest in the publication of the study.
It was in light
of this prosecution evidence that the panel made its findings on Thursday. The
verdict re-iterated the charges originally framed by Brian Deer in the Sunday
Times as if no defence evidence had been presented, in fact, as if neither the
defendants nor their counsel had never been involved in the case.
The defence case
had been straightforward and unlike the prosecution case, had seemed more or
less unarguable. Around 1994, various parents whose children suffered from
terrible bowel problems, and regressive autism, sometimes immediately after
their MMR vaccination, began to approach the Royal Free Hospital, wishing the
country’s gastrointestinal experts to
examine them and give a diagnostic opinion. Throughout 1994 to 2002, such
parents were always passed by Dr Wakefield to Professor Walker-Smith who
involved Dr Simon Murch, in clinically reviewing
these cases. Dr Wakefield's involvement in these cases had deepened when it
began to become evident that many of the children were suffering from a new, or
novel bowel illness. Dr Wakefield was, after all, the head of the Experimental
Gastrointestinal Unit at the Royal Free Hospital.
In 1997, before
any formal research trials were begun or carried out, Dr Wakefield with a
number of other colleagues, began to assemble ‘a case review paper', which
involved recording the cases of 12 children who had arrived at the Royal Free
consecutively in the preceding few years. Such a paper serves two purposes, it
advertises the work of the department and can be used to argue for new funding,
and it gives an early warning to other clinicians who might well come across
similar cases. The resultant paper, was not the report of 'a trial' or 'a
research project' of any kind, it was simply an account of the presentation of
twelve children. Although Professor Walker-Smith did have ethical committee
approval for the extraction of histological samples from child patients,
research ethical committee approval is not needed for such a paper unless the
children have been examined with such a paper in mind. No money was used or
received from outside the National Health Service, for either the clinically
necessary evaluation of the children or for the case review study. All twelve
children were examined by clinicians and not Dr Wakefield who had nothing at
all to do with their clinical examination, review, or agreed treatment. Most
importantly, no research of any kind was carried out on the condition of these
children prior to their clinical review by clinicians at the Royal Free
Hospital. All the children were examined on the understanding that it was the
clinicians duty to find a cause and to understand the painful and exceptional
bowel trauma experienced by these children.
Claims by the
prosecution that the clinical care of the children had been in the hands of Dr
Wakefield, proved to be so 'off the wall', that the prosecution had to change
the wording of some charges to read, 'Dr Wakefield caused procedures to take
place'. How one causes a colonoscopy, as if it were an act of God, remains a
mystery to me.
This case review
paper, made absolutely no attempt to prove that vaccination caused autism. MMR
vaccination was mentioned at one point in the paper, when the authors made it
clear that some parents had drawn attention to the coincidence of MMR and their
child's illness. The authors suggested that more research might be useful in
this area. Nor was there any mention that MMR or any other vaccination caused
autism, rather the paper described a possible link between Inflammatory Bowel
Disease possibly affected by an unidentified environmental trigger and
regressive autism in some children.
It became clear
part way through the hearing that the prosecution had got everything wrong.
They had rested their case entirely upon a study, for which ethical approval
had been sought but which by the time of the publication of the Lancet case review study, had not
actually taken place. Clearly, the GMC prosecution and the panel did not want
to hear or admit to this huge error, contained originally in Brian Deer's toxic
writing for the Sunday Times. Unable to concede to clarity of the defence case,
the prosecution continued head-banging as if it were a national sport. The
false description of a research trial paid for by the Legal Aid Board that
proved MMR created autism continued to be used to stir up great clouds of dust,
misapprehension and confusion.
* * *
It is perhaps
important that we understand what really happened on Thursday, that we
understand the language that was used and it's meaning. Following the verdict,
most of the lay public will be thinking that the professional behaviour of the
three doctors had been seriously scrutinised at great length and considerable
cost, using significant analytical, intellectual energy.
However, this is
not true description of what had happened. A truthful reflection on yesterday would
go as follows. Towards the middle of the 1990s Dr Andrew Wakefield wrote to the
Senior Medical functionaries in the National Health Service, warning that a
public health crisis might occur if the government continued with it's MMR
triple vaccine programme. This communication came roughly two years after the
UK Chief Medical officer had withdrawn two MMR vaccines which contained Urabe
mumps strain. Over the previous decade, in various countries this vaccine had
been found to create serious adverse reactions in children. With the British
government left holding only one brand of 'safe' MMR and having caused already
perhaps thousands of diverse adverse reactions in the children who had received
the vaccine, the government and the pharmaceutical industry was not about to
listen to Dr Wakefield or anyone else who mentioned the words adverse reaction.
In 1998, Dr
Wakefield along with eleven other authors published 'a case review' paper in
the Lancet. The paper charted the details of 12 children who had sequentially
arrived at the Royal Free Hospital in search of clinical treatment for serious
bowel conditions. Dr Richard Horton of the Lancet, even today, maintains that
the science of this paper was beyond reproach, although he gave evidence to the
hearing that Dr Wakefield's non-declaration a conflict of interest in the
journal of which he is editor was unforgivable.
From 1998
onwards, the government and the pharmaceutical companies organised a merciless
campaign against Dr Wakefield. Brian Deer wrote a number of stories in the
Sunday Times with the intention of discrediting expert witnesses in previous
vaccine damage cases in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2003, legal aid was withdrawn
from the claim being prepared by parents against three vaccine manufacturers. In
2004 the appeal on behalf of the parents was turned down. Immediately after
this, Brian Deer published in the Sunday Times his first major attack on Dr
Wakefield, a complete character assassination written with the help of the
private enquiry agency Medico-legal Investigations, solely funded by The
Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries. With the help of various
people including the then Secretary of State for Health John Reid, Deer
tendered his paperwork upon which he had based his skittish article, to the GMC
and from then on it formed the basis of the developing Fitness to Practice
Hearing against Dr Wakefield, Professor Murch and
Professor Walker-Smith.
In 2007, the GMC
began their trial of the three doctors that has continued over two and a half
years and is yet to finish with the sentencing of the doctor in the period
between April and July of this year. In the time between Brian Deer lodging his
complaint with the GMC in 2004 and the verdict on fact on Thursday, a period of
six years, the government has continued to introduce new and unsafe
vaccinations damaging hundreds if not thousands of young people and children.
This programme has culminated with the International fraud over swine flue
vaccination, with which major pharmaceutical companies conned governments out
of billions of pounds.
So, yesterday's
verdict was not what it might appear, a reasonable judgement of a wise and
considered tribunal. Rather the verdict was what the pharmaceutical companies
hope would be a death blow, an end to the battle with a troublesome doctor.
When Big Pharma and the corrupt New Labour government
asked the question 'Who will rid me of this troublesome doctor', the GMC was
the first to put its hand in the air.
* *
*
It’s11.30 pm on
Thursday night, I have watched a number of
news broadcasts, I think in the believe that sense would prevail on one
channel and the truth would break through the screen. It didn't happen. Watching the news was a little like taking a
bath in Walt Disney animations. Relentlessly, Wakefield was portrayed as a
scaremonger, and worse as a criminal, a man who carried out damaging
experiments on autistic children.
Even the parents
tended to come across in news extracts as a confused entity because the media
does not have time to explain that these people are parents of vaccine damaged
children who have supported Dr Wakefield and his colleagues in their attempt to
find a diagnosis for their children's illness. The media simplifies and
distorts everything making it eminently clear who are the good guys and who are
the bad guys yet brings you no evidence as to how they arrived at these
opinions.
There is a
peculiar sense in which all messages are broken, or twisted; nothing is
continuous, deep or simply expressed; all statements are based on false
premises.
* *
*
It seems
important to say something about the media in Britain - at least as far as
medicine is concerned, though it could easily be stretched to the invasion of
Iraq - in the throws of corporate totalitarianism.
Having sat
through the two and a half years of the hearing, I know that the media
generally have only been ghosts in the machine, never present, never making a
clear or analytical record of the proceedings. Turning up as they did like
cattle on the day of the verdict what could they report apart from the panel's
corrupt verdict? But, inevitably the situation is far worse than this lapse in
concentration as the headlines last night and this mornings papers testified.
Yesterday, early
outside the GMC, I watched Brian Deer being interviewed by Sky News, he said
things about the hearing which seemed to me to be a product of his own fevered
imagination, things that bore not the slightest relation to any reality I had
observed. After the interview was over, I approached the Sky journalist who had
carried out the interview and asked him politely whether or not, when the
interview was run that evening, an announcement would be made of the place of
James Murdoch, one of the family owners of Sky, on the board of GlaxoSmith Kline the vaccine manufacturer.
'No', the
journalist said, already turning away from me. 'We give a balanced account and
there is no need for that kind of declaration'.
Obviously I had
expected nothing more than this, but even so, I couldn't help but be astounded
again, at how crooked the contemporary world is and at what shysters these
people who call themselves journalists are.
I think that it
is time that we turned 'secret ties to industry', from conflict of interest
into corporate crime and made it a clearly defined criminal offence for any
person to hold a position of authority or to be quoted on any material matter
without citing either personal or organisational, contemporary or historical,
links with corporations involved in the area under discussion.
I will end this
report with a clear example of the criminal misinformation indulged in by the
British press. Not having lived in the US, I have no idea of how the media
deals with the matter of vaccines, but I fear that most North Americans can
have no understanding of the unmitigated rottenness of the British Media, and
without such an understanding they might find it hard to grasp how this tidal
wave has crashed down upon Dr Wakefield.
A report
appeared this morning in the Mirror newspaper, a vaguely Labour leading
tabloid, quoting Dr Miriam Stoppard who is a septuagenarian columnist in the
paper. Stoppard has campaigned against alternative medicine, in favour of
Hormone Replacement Therapy and in favour of MMR, in everything from the most
immature teen girl's magazines to the Mirror newspaper.
On Friday
morning, previous writing of hers was repeated in the Mirror newspaper.
Stoppard is just one of the many medical hacks that keep the wheels of vested
interest turning inside the UK pharma-soaked media,
but I think for reader world wide a brief look at the inanity on the morrow of
the verdict against Andrew Wakefield, Professor Murch
and Professor Walker-Smith might help readers outside the UK understand how the
GMC is presently getting away with its lamentable corruption.
Miriam Stoppard
writes an agony aunt column for the Daily Mirror Newspaper. She has a company,
Miriam Stoppard Lifetime through which she sells her books and health products.
After training as a doctor she began working for the drug company Syntex and eventually becoming one of the companies a
managing directors. In 1997, she married
Sir Christopher Hogg, who until 2004 had been Chairman of GlaxoSmith
Kline, the vaccine manufacturer.
Here are Miriam Stoppard's
remarks on Dr Wakefield's work, read on Friday morning by thousands of Mirror
readers.
Knowing the MMR was probably one of the most highly tested vaccinations
ever, I was shocked by Andrew Wakefield's words in 1998. I looked at his paper
and I found it was very badly researched with lots of holes. It certainly
didn't constitute any kind of cause or relationship between the MMR vaccine and
the appearance of autism. I was astonished it was even published. Shortly
after, I wrote a big piece for the Mirror about how it was flawed and
irresponsible. I tried to reassure parents it didn't show a connection between
MMR and autism, the jab was safe and they should vaccinate their kids. However,
a lot of the media came out and emphasised the autism
connection and my attempts at reassurance were ineffective. Parents were driven
towards single vaccines. But single vaccinations aren't licensed in this
country so we don't even know if they're safe or effective. And while you're
giving children single vaccinations, they're not protected against the other
illnesses. So there is absolutely no reason, science or logic in using them.
And the argument that the MMR overloads a baby's immune system is rubbish. It
can take more than 10,000 doses of the MMR vaccination and not turn a hair. Wakefield
and his bad research have an awful lot to answer for'.
Although it is hardly necessary, here is a
brief rebuttal
MMR
was probably one of the most highly tested vaccinations ever - not true.
I
was shocked by Andrew Wakefield's words in 1998 - which words.
I
looked at his paper and I found it was very badly researched with lots of holes
- evidence?
It
certainly didn't constitute any kind of cause or relationship between the MMR
vaccine and the appearance of autism - the
paper didn't claim to show any causal link between MMR and autism - how did you
read it and miss this?
I
was astonished it was even published - Thank
God your not the editor of a medical journal.
Shortly
after, I wrote a big piece for the Mirror about how it was flawed and
irresponsible - How much were you paid
for this article. Did you declare any conflict of interest?
I
tried to reassure parents it didn't show a connection between MMR and autism,
the jab was safe and they should vaccinate their kids - The paper didn't claim to show any connection between MMR and autism,
however to assure parents without any evidence to the contrary is a disgusting
abdication of medical responsibility, do you still have your doctors practice
certificate?
Single vaccinations
aren't licensed in this country, so we don't even know if they're safe or
effective. And while you're giving children single vaccinations, they're not
protected against the other illnesses. So there is absolutely no reason,
science or logic in using them - How is
possible to pack so many mistakes into 3 sentences? Single vaccines were
licensed at the time of the publication of the Lancet paper. We do know that
they are safe and effective because in the case of measles they were used from
1976 onwards. In the case of mumps, the NHS advised against vaccination and in
the case of Rubella, vaccination was suggested only for women likely to become
pregnant. Interesting that you say that we shouldn't be using single vaccines.
Is this the case for say, malaria, I mean if it doesn't also protect people
against measles I think you must clearly be right!
* *
*
At
the end of the day, we have to keep the parents at the forefront of our mind
and we have to consider that everything that can be done, should be done to
find some kind of safe haven for them. All our battles, whether they be
political, scientific or cultural have to be directed towards getting diagnosis
and treatment for the children, while at the same time mercilessly pursuing the
criminals within the pharmaceutical industry and the government who now profess
the new creed of vaccine damage denial.
*
* *
The End of Science History
Last week,
following the guilty verdict of the GMC Fitness to Practice Hearing in the case
of Wakefield, Murch and Walker-Smith, the Lancet and one other journal expunged
Wakefield's work from the academic record. A person's work is often their life
and erasure of this work from the record under a determination of dishonesty,
is very close to erasure of the subject's life. To erase scientific work from
the history and progress of science, is perhaps the closest you can come to
academic assassination; it is not, however, something new. It is perhaps a sign
of the growing power of the chemical and pharmaceutical corporation that what
was
Those who
imagine that this liquidation of a person's work from the record is a novel
technique invented solely for the use of pharmaceutical companies in relation
to Dr Wakefield, should take a look at the shenanigans that surrounded the 1985
Australian Royal Commission on Agent Orange and dioxin on
Australian personnel during the Vietnam War. [1] Agent Orange was a herbicide dropped by the US and their allies on
forested areas of Vietnam so as to expose insurgent fighters and groups. Agent
Orange contained dioxin in large quantities. Shortly after involvement in
dropping Agent Orange in Vietnam, US and Australian troops and even the dogs
used by the military showed serious adverse reaction to the chemical. The
Vietnamese are still having to cope with familial genetic damage caused by
Agent Orange forty years later.
The Australian
Royal commission was from the start a 'get-up'. Two Swedish doctors, Lennart Hardell and Olaf Axelson, had some years
before the commission managed to get dioxin-based herbicides banned in Sweden. Hardell gave evidence to the Royal Commission but he paid
dearly for this privilege. The judge's final verdict that there was no
evidence that exposure to Agent Orange, including TCDD (Dioxin), was a health
hazard turned out to be an almost verbatim account of a Monsanto submission on
the issue.
In the days
following the verdict of the Royal Commission, Richard Doll, the 'great'
epidemiologist, who unbeknown to his colleagues and fans had since the nineteen
seventies been receiving $1,000 a day (later raised to $1,500) on a
consultative basis for recommending the chemical products of Monsanto, [2] one of the companies manufacturing Agent Orange, wrote to Justice Evatt who had presided over the last part of the hearing.
[3]. Doll’s unsolicited letter to Evatt supported
the Commission’s conclusions. In the letter Doll stated:
'relating to 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T
(the phenoxy herbicides in question) that there is no
reason to suppose that they are carcinogenic in laboratory animals and that
even TCDD (dioxin), which has been postulated to be a dangerous contaminant of
the herbicides, is at the most, only weakly and
inconsistently carcinogenic in animal experiments . . . I am sure,
however, that it [your review] will be widely quoted and that it will come to
be regarded as the definitive work of the subject. [4]
Doll’s letter goes on
to question the veracity and validity of the work by Dr Hardell
and his colleagues, and without one word about science, epidemiology or
methodology, its very legitimacy as scientific work.
'Your Review of Hardell’s work, with the additional evidence obtained
directly from him at interview, shows that many of his published statements
were exaggerated or not supportable and that there were many opportunities for
bias to have been introduced in the collection of his data. His conclusions
cannot be sustained and in my opinion, his
work should no longer be cited as scientific evidence.' (Author's italics).
[5]
Within a few
days of the Commission having given its ruling - that Agent Orange and dioxin
were perfectly safe, an advert, disguised as a news feature, appeared in many
of the world's leading newspapers. The main content of the advert was Doll's
attack on Hardell and his suggestion that Hardell's work should 'no longer be cited as scientific
evidence'.
This idea that Hardell's work is not scientific has followed him around
for two decades, making him the subject of attack around different toxic
industrial products from a series of organised groups and individuals. Doll
never retracted this attempt to liquidate Hardell's
science and his bank balance was undoubtedly enhanced with the lucre deposited
by Monsanto.
The writer
George Orwell is often quoted in relation to contemporary battles between
governments, multinational corporations and citizens. In looking at
totalitarianism, Orwell seems to have had an intelligence for getting the
details right, especially in his novel Nineteen Eighty Four. [6]
What strikes
such a resonance, in the modern mind with Orwell's dystopian future, is the way
in which information and language is separated from the material reality of
society. In Nineteen Eighty Four the work of the central character, Winston
Smith, involves changing newspaper reports where they do not coincide with the contemporary
circumstances of the Party. Winston loves his work and reflects upon each
change he makes in back copies of the Times
as utilising all his journalistic skills to the maximum. While he is
working Smith tells us about the philosophical principles that lie behind
correcting the Times.
'As soon as all the corrections which
happened to be necessary in any particular number of the Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be
reprinted, the original copy destroyed and the corrected copy placed on the
files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied to not
only newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, film,
sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or
documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological
significance. Day by day and almost minute be minute the past was brought up to
date. In this way, every prediction made by the Party could be shown by
documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any
expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, every
allowed to remain on record'.
The unfortunate
fact is that progressive and patient-centred scientists are partially
themselves to blame for the censorship and dirty tricks that are taking place
in a number of scientific fields. Almost without thought, most scientists have
happily pursued research for which money is seemingly available and have failed
to involve themselves in the politics of science. Consequently, industry,
especially the pharmaceutical industry, now has control of many aspects of
science. It is becoming increasingly important that independent scientists form
organisations to protect themselves from this onslaught of bias presently propagated
by industrial science.
[1] Royal
Commission on the Use and Effects of Chemical Agents on
Australian Personnel in Vietnam, Sweden ISSN 02808471
1986.
[2] Doll, 1986
see PP/DOL, Sir Richard Doll (b. 1912) Epidemiologist. Wellcome
Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine.
[3] Doll R.
1985. Letter from Richard Doll, Green College, December 4, 1985 to The Hon. Mr.
Justice Phillip Evatt, DSC, LLB [ref: 40-X-016]
[4] Doll 1985. ibid
[5] Doll 1985. ibid
[6] George
Orwell, Ninteeen Eighty-Four. Penguine
Modern Classics. 1987.
Dr Wakefield
and the strange case of the Censorious phone call
The Strange Case of the Censorious Phone Call
I want to start
this post with an apology. Writing my last piece about the liquidation of Dr
Wakefield's science I was rushed. Not only was I still suffering from the
trauma of the GMC verdict but I was also finishing a book. Rushed and
traumatised, I wrote a very truncated post that left out one of the most
important acts of attempted censorship in British science in the last decade.
As it happens, the case of Arpad Pusztie
does more than echo the case of Dr Wakefield; because of an apparently odd
coincidence, it actually links to it.
I should warn
readers that what follows is a very unsavoury tale best not read over
breakfast, or any other meal for that matter.
In 2007 Dr
Richard Horton and Sir Peter Lachmann found
themselves on the same side batting for the prosecution in Dr Wakefield's GMC
Fitness to Practice Hearing. Lachmann's evidence intruiging. In his original Sunday Times article Brian Deer had suggested that Dr Wakefield had
taken out a patent on an alternative vaccine to MMR, intimating that, had he
been able to damage MMR in his Lancet
case review paper and future studies, he would have been able to make millions
from the sales of his own vaccine. The prosecution pursued this fairy story
with absurd alacrity throughout two and a half years of the hearing. It has
re-emerged after the verdict as well, again propagated by Deer and his associates.
However, not only was this story a complete forrago,
but the tall tale was actually dropped while Lachmann,
the head honcho of British genetic modification, gave his evidence.
The patent that
Dr Wakefield had taken out on behalf of the Royal Free Hospital, was for a
particular type of Transfer Factor that he believed might conceivably by able
to reverse the adverse reactions that some children might have suffered
following MMR vaccination; in the event, it was given by a clinician to only
one child with the involvement of the parents, and had no apparent success and
so was not used further. Once again
Deer, had turned an innocent and compassionate scientific idea into an
untruthful fabrication which described Dr Wakefield as someone who thought he
could take on single handed one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the
world and produce a vaccine to rival MMR. For this was the prosecution case on
this issue: first Wakefield would attack the leading vaccine manufacturers with
concocted stories of adverse reactions to the MMR vaccine, then he would
distribute his new vaccine, presumably on a global scale. Did the prosecution
believe this? Did Miss Smith, the senior prosecutor, believe it? Could they?
Would you?
Certainly they
never put such a story to Sir Peter Lachmann because
even he would have had to put them right about the fact that Transfer Factor
wasn't 'a vaccine' that would compete with MMR. So while Miss Smith took Lachmann through his evidence - she slaloming between very
general comments about the possibility of using TF to inhibit various viruses
and microbes - it was Lachmann who pointed out the
fact that nowhere in any of the papers did it actually state that Dr Wakefield
was using TF to inhibit measles virus - and more specifically as an untested
and possibly dangerous treatment. Lachmann described
the history of the therapeutic use of TF, telling the hearing that it had had
mildly curative effects in some trials. However, inevitably, in Lachmann's opinion, Wakefield was completely misguided; the
type of Transfer Factor he suggested would do no good to an autistic child, for
this is what the subjects were according to Miss Smith, not children with
inflammatory bowel disease but simply autistic.
Despite it being
clear that Deer's description of TF as a vaccine that could rival MMR, wouldn't
stand up, after Lachmann had given his evidence, the
prosecution returned to this story and it has surfaced with repetitive daftness
right up to the present day. Even on the
matter of dangerous experimental substances and chances of serious adverse
reactions, Lachmann did next to nothing for the
prosecution. Miss Smith's stroll through Lachmann's
evidence ended with this exchange:
Q
As far as the Dr Fudenberg version,
I hesitate to ask an eminent scientist to speculate, but are you able to
give any assistance at all as to whether that might have side effects and what
they might be?
A
In general I would imagine it is very much like drinking goat's
milk; I would not imagine it was any more dangerous than that. If they have stimulated these goats to make
inflammatory cytokines in their colostrum, which is
possible, then it might have the same possibility of improving or creating side
effects due to immuno‑potentiation that you can
get from other forms of transfer factor.
I would have thought it was fairly unlikely that you would have
enough of anything in there to produce cytokine storms or anything of this
description. The more probable is that it would have no particular effects at
all.
Sir Peter Lachmann's low-key evidence that mildly ridiculed Dr
Wakefield, like so much of the prosecution evidence, took what was essentially
Brian Deer's random and inarticulate accusations no further.
In fact, so
little effect did the evidence have that each of the defence counsel turned
down the opportunity to cross examine Lachmann. At
the time I felt this was to some extent a missed opportunity, at least, I
thought, they should have asked him about the strange case of the threatening
phone call. Or did defence counsel not know that Lachmann
was slightly more than he seemed?
* * *
In February 1999 Hungarian-born Dr Arpad Pusztai, an established geneticist at the Rowatt Institute in Scotland, discovered that mice fed
genetically modified potato suffered stunted growth and depressed immune
function. The time of his finding was unfortunately propitious. Two years
earlier New Labour had a landslide victory at the polls and Tony Blair headed
up a government packed with Liberal industrial interests that had turned
parliament into something resembling a stock exchange.
The bio-industrialist Lord Sainsbury, a life time Liberal who had
gifted around £6M to Blair's election war chest, was thanked for his
contribution by a knighthood and given the position of science czar, head of the Department of Trade and Industry, and all
matters scientific.
This was the period when the brilliant US journalist Greg Palast wrote his dream-shattering book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and coined the term Lobbygate
to describe the scandal that he uncovered in the offices of Westminster. It was
a time when Britain and everything in it was up for sale, auctioned off by
elected and selected politicians and those YUPPIES in double breasted suites
who might only a decade earlier have been called civil servants.
Lord Sainsbury and his trusted lieutenant Liberal peer Dick Taverne, both with an involved history with pharmaceutical
and PR corporations, were hell-bent on introducing genetically engineered (GM)
crops into Britain at Monsanto's behest. Accusations that he might have taken
this tack because he was himself the owner of massive GM concerns worth
millions of pounds, were laid to rest when he told the public that all his
estates and Trusts were blinded for the duration of his time in ministerial
office.
But of course it was hardly Dr Pusztai's
fault that the results of 35 years hard work, hundreds of peer-reviewed papers
and a commitment to honest scientific research, should produce such results at
exactly the same time that the moneylenders had squatted the temple. Within
weeks of his announcing the results of his research, Pusztai's
career was terminated, and he became Public Enemy Number One. Having talked on Newsnight and the World in Action programme Pusztai was accused of breaking the rules of the
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funding by
breaking a gagging clause that prohibited scientists from becoming 'involved in
political controversy on biotechnology and biological science'. Now as his life
went rapidly down the tubes, he was, it was suggested, a second-rate research
scientist, and, at age 68, past it: ‘an old man who had muddled his results’.
His grants were withdrawn, he lost his position at the Rowett
and the 18-strong research team that he had assembled was dismantled. [1]
Pusztai was no push-over and although
corporate and government interests tried to make him, in another word coined by
Orwell in Nineteen Eighty Four, an 'unperson', he
pursued his agreement with Dr Richard Horton of the Lancet to make ready his research paper for publication. Of course
trying to stop a journal from publishing a paper is quite a different kettle of
fish from taking a paper out of a journal once it had been published.
However, the
rebuttal unit - some of the most decorated scientists in Britain - put their
heads together and came up with what they saw as a good solution and in the
Autumn of 1999, Dr Richard Horton revealed that a senior fellow of the Royal
Society had threatened him with the loss of his job if he published Pusztai's research. The threat was carried out in the
manner of all good thrillers, over the phone, probably with a white
handkerchief over the handset, and although Horton, always the slippery
gentleman, wouldn't name his antagonist, intrepid reporters from the Guardian newspaper took only a short
time to deduce who had made the threat.
Chief amongst
those in the Rebuttal cabal was Professor Lachmann, a
vehement opponent of the precautionary principle whose extensive CV included at
that time, a position on the scientific advisory board of the pharmaceutical
giant SmithKlineBeecham (now GlaxoSmithKline),
vaccine manufacturers that invested heavily in biotechnology. If you imagine
that Lachmann's role in this unsavoury affair earned
him a serious rebuke from his peers you imagine wrongly. In the Alice in
Wonderland world of British science, the Neanderthals rule and the odd threat
to a journal editor is seen only as robust science strategy.
In retrospect,
the GMC Fitness to Practice Hearing looks increasingly like a fairground during
a power cut glimpsed over the shoulder of a man on the run. Increasingly as
well one's mind is blocked with a traffic jam of thoughts about how it might be
possible to get some of its leading prosecuting actors into criminal court and
then to Jail where they belong.
Posted: March 12, 2010
Scienza e Democrazia/Science
and Democracy
[1] George Monbiot, Silent
Science, in Captive State: The corporate takeover of Britain. Pan Books,
London 2000.