Press Release from Dr Wakefield Re BMJ Article

[Guest guest]

BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL PUBLISHES FALSE CLAIMS ABOUT

MMR DOCTOR

Journalist Deer’s Allegations about Dr. Wakefield fails to

disclose press complaint

LONDON, ENGLAND, April 16, 2010 --- Today the British Medical Journal (BMJ)

has published an

online commentary authored by journalist Deer in which he makes

further allegations against Dr.

Wakefield and the doctors involved in the 1998 Lancet study that

first reported possible links

between MMR and autism, without affording Dr. Wakefield an opportunity to

respond simultaneously to

these serious allegations online. Deer’s latest claims follow his February

2009 Sunday Times article

accusing Dr. Wakefield of “fixing data†for which there is a pending

complaint to the UK’s Press

Complaints Commission (PCC). The BMJ’s press release regarding this latest

published “special reportâ€

by Deer, along with Dr. Wakefield’s point-by-point response, is

below:

This week, the BMJ questions the existence of a new bowel condition in

autistic children dubbed “autistic

enterocolitis†by Dr Wakefield and colleagues in a now infamous and

recently retracted paper

published by the Lancet in 1998.

In a special report, journalist Deer tries to unravel the journey

of the biopsy reports that formed the basis of the study, while an

accompanying editorial asks does

autistic enterocolitis exist at all?

In 1996, Dr Wakefield was hired by a solicitor to help launch

a speculative lawsuit against drug companies that manufactured MMR vaccine

to find what he called at

the time “a new syndrome†of bowel and brain disease caused by vaccines.

FALSE. I was not hired by a solicitor to find a new syndrome of bowel and

brain disease caused by

vaccines. I acted as a medical expert in respect of two matters: first, to

provide a report on safety

studies of measles-containing vaccines; and second, to look for evidence

of measles virus in

intestinal tissues of children with Crohn’s disease, and children with

regressive developmental

disorder and intestinal symptoms who were undergoing investigation for

possible bowel disease.

The proposed “new syndrome†was not what Deer claims. At the material

time, the “new

syndrome†consisted of gastrointestinal symptoms (not disease) in children

with developmental

regression. Prior to the clinical investigation of these children, the

presence of intestinal disease had

not been determined.

Deer reveals that biopsy reports from the Royal Free Hospital’s pathology

service on 11 children

included in the Lancet study showed that eight out of 11 were interpreted

as being largely normal. But in

the paper, 11 of the 12 children were said to have “non-specific colitisâ€

: a clinically significant

inflammation of the large bowel.

FALSE. The findings were correctly reported in The Lancet paper. The

meticulous process by

which the diagnoses were made in the children reported in that paper has

been described on

numerous occasions, including in published papers, in Mr. Deer’s presence

at the GMC, in the

complaint filed against him to the PCC that is published online1. For the

avoidance of doubt, the

1 _http://www.cryshame.co.uk//images/stories/complaint_to_uk_pcc.pdf_

(http://www.cryshame.co.uk//images/stories/complaint_to_uk_pcc.pdf)