The Great Vaccination Hoax: One Year Later

It's been almost a year since I wrote about the revelations of fraud, deceit, and even blatant lying on the part of Andrew Wakefield and his associates in the preparation of their "research" that supposedly linked the use of the routine childhood MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine with the later development of autism and a previously "unknown" disease, autistic enterocolitis.

At the time that post was written, there was no publicly-available explanation as to what motivated Wakefield to risk his professional career, and those of his coworkers, by publishing fraudulent research. That question has now been answered.

It appears that Wakefield's sole motivation was also the oldest one known to man: he did it for the money.

According to a series of articles by investigative reporter Brian Deer (Part 1Part 2) published in the British Medical Journal, the Sunday Times of London, and aired on England's Channel 4 News as well, Wakefield was something of a medical entrepreneur who had personal business interests in several "nontraditional" medical therapies including "immunotherapy," medical testing products that would be used to determine the "cause" of a child's autism, and a "safe" MMR vaccine to which he held the patent. According to a financial prospectus from the 1990s that was presented to potential investors that was later obtained by Deer, Wakefield estimated that licensing fees and royalties that would be paid to Wakefield and his partners would exceed $40 million USD per year.

Unfortunately, the only way that Wakefield's products would have even the remotest chance of commercial success would require some evidence that MMR vaccines then currently in use in both Great Britain and the United States were in some way unsafe. When no such evidence was forthcoming, Wakefield simply took the path of least resistance and manufactured his own evidence that supposedly linked childhood MMR vaccinations to autism.

In the years since Wakefield's bogus study was released, his fabricated data has been elevated to a status that rivals that of sacred scripture among those groups that are always searching for a "cause" of autism while Wakefield himself has gone from, first, brilliant researcher and humanitarian to persecuted visionary. It will probably take a lifetime before the True Believers will accept the obvious: not only does their hero have Feet of Clay, he is cut wrapped in a cloak of deceit and greed.

At various times over the past year, I have taken a look at the almost uncountable web sites, personal web pages, and commercializations (e.g. personal injury lawyers) that are devoted to spreading Wakefield's nonsense to an unsuspecting world.

Out of all the web sites that I reviewed as a result of a Google search and by use of the Internet Archives "Wayback Machine" that had promoted Wakefield's MMR scam I found that only one, an organization calling itself the Association for Comprehensive Neurotherapy (ACN: "Finding Tomorrow's Treatments Today"), even came close to actually renouncing the vaccine theory. Sadly, this outfit did not mention that Wakefield's theory was based on deliberately-falsified data: it simply moved references to the MMR vaccine, and the discussion boards relative to Wakefield's data, to a location several pages further down in the site's directory Would you care to guess what replaced the Autistic Gospel According to Wakefield on the ACN home page?

If you said "facial tics and 'Tourette's Syndrome," you may move to the front of the class! Now, for extra credit and a seat of honor at the right hand of the plaintiff''s attorney, what is claimed to the unequivocal cause of these conditions? If you answered "childhood vaccines' and 'Thimerosal," and you may now rest until the necessary paperwork for your canonization is completed.

A far more common response to the events of the last year is to be found in the response of Mssrs. Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill, who happen to be the co-authors of something called Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic.

On their web site ("The Daily Web Newspaper of the Autism Epidemic") these latter day incarnations of the Old West traditions of traveling preachers, fortune-tellers, and snake oil salesmen inform us that:

"Our book tour for "The Age of Autism -- Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic" hits Houston on Saturday [January 15] and Dallas on Monday [January 17]. Saturday morning, we're thrilled to share the stage and lend our personal support to Austin's own Andy Wakefield, after a couple of weeks in which the medical industry and media have made Texas-size fools of themselves trying to take him down."

In closing, my reply to such tripe as the above will be brief.

Give it up, boys! Go back to writing about the space alien family picnic at Area 51 or whatever conspiracy theory is in vogue at the moment. As for me, I'll try to refocus my contempt for such pseudoscience into a little compassion for the ignorant masses that charlatans such as you thrive upon!.

Come to think of it, maybe it's time we revive another almost forgotten tradition: the liberal application of the whip, tar, and feathers to the bodies of the frauds and con men that prey on those who actually believe in such tellers of fairly tales as Andrew Wakefield.