Until recently it was thought that the article by Andrew Wakefield that related vaccination and autism was simply of poor quality. Now we know that it was not about incompetence on the part of the author, but about a true and premeditated fraud to prove causality between the triple viral vaccine and autism.
In 1998, the British medical journal "The Lancet" published the result of Wakefield's research that linked the triple viral vaccine (against measles, mumps and rubella) with the proliferation of autism cases in children.
This article was recently removed from its archive by the magazine, eight years after publishing it, after varied controversies that pointed to the falseness of the data.
Now it has been shown that the inventor of the false connection between the triple viral vaccine and autism planned a series of businesses to obtain economic benefits taking advantage of the fear towards vaccines that his fraudulent investigation would infuse among the public.
Millionaire earnings were calculated after fraud
This week a series of articles that reveal fraud have been published in the British Medical Journal. The journalist Brian Deer, in his long article entitled "How the vaccine crisis was intended to make money" brings some conclusions of great value.
Other articles in the series ("Wakefield's article linking the MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent" and "How the case was planned against the triple viral vaccine"), the result of long and thorough investigations (these yes), provide data fundamental to know everything about fraud.
The journalist points out that the British surgeon and his partners calculated earning millions in millions with future investigations. For example, up to 33 million euros per year could be pocketed in the United States and the United Kingdom only with the commercialization of tests for the detection of autistic enterocolitis, a disease whose existence has not been proven and that was described in the same article of “The Lancet” in which they connected the viral triple with autism .
It highlights the fact that, for the study, patients were recruited through triple viral anti-vaccine campaigns, and the study was funded with a view to a future lawsuit against companies. All a fraudulent assembly that seems impossible that was not detected before.
Why the study that related vaccination and autism was not valid
The journalist Brian Deer, after seven years studying the case and a long article resulting from these investigations, summarizes the fraud of the study that contributed 12 cases of children in this way:
- Three of the nine children with regressive autism did not have autism. Only one had the diagnosis of regressive autism.
- Although the article said that the 12 children were "previously normal", five already had documented developmental problems.
- Some children reported the first behavioral abnormalities in the days around the application of the vaccine, but in the archives they were documented up to months after vaccination.
- In nine cases, histopathological findings of no relevance in the colon (minimal fluctuations in the population of inflammatory cells) were changed after a "review for research purposes" to "non-specific colitis."
- The parents of eight children had been reported blaming the vaccine, but 11 families claimed this in the hospital. The exclusion of three reports, all giving time until the onset of symptoms in months, helped create the appearance that there was a temporary association of 14 days.
After no other team of researchers has ever confirmed the relationship between the vaccine and autism for which Wakefield is famous, the United Kingdom General Medical Council (GMC) banned Wakefield from exercising in the country for his dishonest and irresponsible attitude in The work cited.
Scary to know that behind this assembly not only was the author's economic interests but there is a whole plot in which they appear involved from a Hospital to a lawyer of the anti-vaccine movement who wanted to sue the pharmacists and sought scientific evidence in their support, and who secretly financed a good part of the doctor's work.
It is scary to think of the thousands of children who suffered preventable diseases due to the refusal to vaccinate them with the triple virus after the appearance of Andrew Wakefield's study, and in the many families who continue to believe the conclusions of the false study, with public figures supporting their conclusions.
For now, now we know much more about the fraud that related vaccines and autism. But it is also scary to think about how many studies of this type have reached diffusion and circulate around, giving them valid…
