“Where the channel is deep, the water flows smoothly there.” Henry VI, William Shakespeare.
In the Bard’s time, unlike today, the phrase referred to someone hiding a dangerous nature, and unfortunately it fully applied to Andrew Wakefield, who began his promising career as a charismatic young doctor. Published many research papers. These, as later investigations revealed, were of questionable quality.
A paper was published in the highly respected British medical journal The Lancet in 1998. It later transpired that Wakefield, who was prone to blatant foul play, had completely fooled his co-workers into thinking that his results were real.
The paper only described the “results” of research conducted on 12 children. Wakefield alleged that the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) was the cause of autism and that the measles vaccine in particular was the culprit.
It is no exaggeration to say that this letter changed the word. Vaccine resistance at that stage was confined to a few fringe groups and quacks (where there is such opinion), but global opposition has now spread like wildfire.
The paper attracted well-deserved criticism almost immediately and the relentless accumulation of evidence to the contrary eventually led to an investigation by the British Medical Council. Its report was utterly scandalous: Wakefield had lied from beginning to end. His name was struck off the register of British physicians. This didn’t bother him much – if at all – and he moved to the USA where he resumed his activities, earning a hefty income in the process.
Dear took an interest in the case from the outset, and his book gives an almost exhaustive account of Wakefield’s crimes.
Financial considerations undoubtedly played a major role in Wakefield’s behavior: early in his career, he was already formulating a plan with a lawyer that would allow him to patent and market his own measles vaccine. Enables Fortunately, these plans came to nothing.
Another motivation may have been a desire to gain a reputation as a medical defender – if his allegations about the MMR vaccine had been accepted, it would have caused a major earthquake in medical science, and most likely would have cost him less. would have received MBE less than
Nowadays Wakefield is famous in antivax circles, where he makes huge sums of money by spreading false rumors about the imaginary dangers of all vaccines, claiming they are responsible for more than just autism. This has resulted in loss of life, as in recent times during measles epidemics in Romania, France and Samoa.
In response to questions about these deaths, he said, “I don’t feel responsible at all”.
One aspect of Deer’s book that both my wife and I found a bit troubling was its tendency to exaggerate. Perhaps this is the result of years as a journalist for British newspapers.
This book is aimed at readers who have a specific interest and at least some basic knowledge of vaccines and the workings of the antivax brigade. Those with only a slight interest in the subject will probably put the book aside after a few dozen pages, but anyone interested in these topics will be richly rewarded.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
Source – moosejawtoday