WRITE NOW.... British Medical Journal article on Wakefield - URL to write letter

[Guest guest]

BRITAIN must be FULL of stupid, ignorant GP's..........if that impressed

him...............

This looks like lawsuit material if I ever saw some.

http://www.mmrthequestions.com

Wakefields website for the actual truth of the matter

Sheri

If you wish to defend Dr. Wakefield against attacks by guerilla

journalist Deer, write a " Rapid Response "

letter to the British Medical Journal. Below is the URL for a review by

BMJ's Abi Berger, who praised a recent British

TV program that smears Wakefield.

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7477/1293

BMJ 2004;329:1293 (27 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7477.1293

reviews

TV

Dispatches. MMR: What They Didn't Tell You

Channel 4, Thursday 18 November at 9 pm

Rating:

If you didn't see this programme, find someone who taped it. Not only will

you learn something about the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) health scare,

but it will also give you the opportunity to watch one of the most exciting

examples of investigative television journalism you will ever see. This

episode of Dispatches was utterly compelling both in its presentation and

in its lack of emotional blackmail.

Presenter and journalist Deer seems to have singlehandedly eaten away

at the MMR story. His clear and simple presentation of this, his latest

chapter—describing an enormous clash and conflict of interest between

science, business, huge egos, and the potential to make megabucks—belies

the huge and prolonged efforts he has clearly gone to in trying to get to

the bottom of the MMR tale of woe.

The story so far: following the publication of his paper in the Lancet (

Lancet 1998;351: 637[CrossRef][iSI][Medline]), Dr Wakefield held a

press conference in February 1998, during which he raised concerns that the

MMR vaccine might be causally linked to inflammatory bowel disease and the

subsequent development of autism in young children. These concerns in turn

led Dr Wakefield to offer his own personal opinion that giving single

measles, mumps, and rubella shots might be safer for children. In one fell

swoop he had undermined the MMR vaccination programme in the United

Kingdom, and subsequently around the world.

As scientists and epidemiologists watched the unravelling of the MMR

vaccination campaign, some questions cried out for an answer. Where was

Wakefield coming from? What was the basis of his opinion that single

shots might be safer? Large scale international epidemiological studies

have repeatedly failed to find any indication for his advice to give single

shots, or confirm the assertion of a causal link between the MMR vaccine

and autism. While much time and money have been spent trying to find the

answers in scientific study, Deer's documentary suggested that the answers

might be found in the world of commerce.

Dispatches alleged that, nine months before the 1998 press conference, Dr

Wakefield had filed patent applications at the London Patent Office for a

new, alternative single measles vaccine and several potential treatments

and even " cures " for inflammatory bowel disease and autism.

Nine months later, the MMR health scare was sparked by parties to those

patent applications. As one commentator who was put on the spot by Deer

said, on being made aware of this, not only did these patented " inventions "

represent enormous claims, they also represented the potential of big

money. Enough, it was agreed, to open a new medical school.

Deer dug further to find out exactly what had been patented. Members of the

scientific community to whom he showed the applications unanimously agreed

that the proposed technology behind the inventions (for example, injecting

measles into mice, and then, after extracting and processing white cells,

injecting the result into pregnant goats and using their colostrum to

create capsules for children) lacked scientific credibility.

Cut to an interview with a hitherto unknown character called Dr Nick

Chadwick, a scientist who was a PhD student in Wakefield's team in the late

1990s. Dr Chadwick was responsible for devising the scientific techniques

that would later be used to detect the presence of the measles virus in the

guts of children with autism. Dr Chadwick told Deer categorically that

using these techniques he had not detected any live measles virus in the

guts of any of the 40 children examined. Nor was any measles virus found in

any of the cerebrospinal fluid samples obtained. And yet, despite this,

these findings were not made public. Dr Wakefield claims that he

subsequently published the fact that he considered the technology used by

Dr Chadwick to be insufficiently sensitive.

When Deer asked Dr Chadwick why he had not divulged his findings at the

time, his excuse was that he thought the story would simply die. At the

time he was a student, and he felt he could not argue with Dr Wakefield,

who was a charismatic supervisor.

Dr Wakefield now spends much of his time in the United States, where he is

linked to a company that promotes products said to be of benefit to

autistic children. He continues to address huge audiences at major

conferences on autism. And he continues to refuse to be interviewed by

Deer.

He has also issued a statement on the internet stating that many of the

claims made by Deer were " demonstrably false " and that because there had

been " no objectivity in the manner of their intended portrayal, I declined

to participate in any way in the making of the... programme "

(www.whale.to/a/wak33.html).

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Abi Berger, associate editor, BMJ, and general practitioner

London aberger@...

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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm