Andrew Wakefield on PRN, February 12, 2009

From Transcript of panel discussion (w./ David Kirby, Barbara Lo Fisher, and Robert Krakow) – only Andrew’s comments are below  from broadcast on February 12, 2009

First response from Wakefield – Describing his study and data

There are studies that have been performed.  Gary, thank you very much for inviting me on the show and it’s always a pleasure to be on a show with Barbara Loe Fisher who has contributed more to this issue than anyone else in the history of this planet. So it is my pleasure to be here. 

            There is a striking absence of adequate safety studies of measles containing vaccines and the MMR in particular, and this is something that I looked at many years ago writing a 250 page report prior to the publication of The Lancet paper in 1998 to satisfy myself that I was not being unduly critical of the vaccine, and I was deeply saddened and somewhat alarmed to see that safety studies haven’t been done, and this was then confirmed by the Cochran Review, which is a gold standard – the gold standard medical literature review, which gives a real insight into what has happened and says that the safety studies of the MMR vaccine have been largely inadequate and that is my opinion. And so there is clearly a reason for concern. 

            Well I realized from very early on that this was a thorny subject, and when I was at the Royal Free, but I felt that based upon the parents’ stories very, very similar to those that you’ve heard in your many, many interviews that there was a compelling issue that needed to be addressed.  I did not know and I still do not know whether it is right or wrong. That is that MMR is causally associated with autistic regression and bowel disease, but the story was sufficiently compelling and remains sufficiently compelling that it needed thorough investigation.  And my obligation has and always will be the patient. Not to policy or profit, but to actually establishing whether the patient’s history and findings are consistent with in this case an association with MMR vaccine. And we will not – I will not and my colleagues will not be deterred from investigating that possibility until the truth is in.  And at a very early stage it was suggested to me by senior members of the medical school that this might not be good for my career.  Well that’s as may be, but my career and my professional obligation more to the patient and that remains the same today.  And so we continue to do the work now that we set out doing all those years ago with equal if not renewed vigor.  And we are not deterred.  Disappointed, but not deterred by the vaccine court ruling today. 

            Certainly.  I’ll just preface that Gary by saying that to his own credit Keith Olbermann has as you pointed out to some extent retracted and corrected the situation, and I would be delighted to appear on his show at any time to reiterate the story that I’ll tell you now.  But in 1995 a parent contacted me and said my child was perfectly normal. They had their MMR vaccine and they disappeared.  They became autistic and they developed terrible bowel problems.  I was not a pediatric gastroenterologist, and so I suggested they seek a referral to the world’s expert, and that is Professor John Walter Smith in London who was perhaps the founding father of pediatric gastroenterology.  The child eventually came to a colonoscopy.  I learned to hold consistent with the parent’s belief the child had an inflammatory bowel disease.  We had a number – a large number of similar calls in the intervening period, and so we started looking at these children both from a clinical perspective, which was the priority. Do the symptoms in these children reflect bowel disease? That was the first question.  And from my perspective what is the nature of this disease if there is one and is it associated with a virus and if so the vaccine virus? 

So that was what we did and in – we did a thorough systematic investigation of these children according to their symptoms and published that in The Lancet in 1998.  Let me make it absolutely clear. There is no question whatsoever of fixing or forging the data, and the sad news is that the journalist who made that claim sat in a hearing of the General Medical Counsel that is the body in England that regulates doctors – a hearing that he himself had initiated by his complaint in the Medical Counsel. There had never been a complaint from a patient or a parent at any stage.  And he sat there and listened to these questions being put to me and my colleagues. We answered them. Documentary evidence was produced which confirmed our position, and yet knowingly he still went and made false allegations in the newspaper.  I have to say that he’s made some very, very fundamental errors and this recklessness in the journalistic approach tends to suggest a degree of desperation, and that may be because the General Medical Counsel hearing, which has heard evidence from me and from my colleagues Professor Walter Smith and Professor Murge (sp?) has gone well. It has gone extremely well in as much that we have been allowed to present the facts of the case what actually happened and I think that as the story has unraveled then the journalist and those he works with whoever they may be have become increasingly concerned because they’ve got a tiger by the tail.  If we are exonerated on the charges that he’s put before the – all the allegations he’s put before the GMC, then clearly it will give credence to not only the bowel disease in these children but also the merits of the parents’ stories of regression from MMR. 

And I’ll just give you an example, Gary, is that he accuses me of changing the pathology results.  But he knows because the evidence was presented at the hearing that I had absolutely no role in coming to the diagnosis in these children. That is looking down the microscope. This was left to the expert at the Royal Free Hospital in bowel disease in the microscopic appearance of bowel disease, and his opinion was the final ruling on whether there was inflammation or not.  I changed absolutely nothing.  I entered his diagnosis into the paper. The paper was then re-circulated to all of the relevant authors prior to publication so that they could ensure that their position had been appropriately represented.  Now why would he do this?  I do not know and I don’t wish to speculate on why he would wish to do it, but certainly the efforts to discredit me while I would avoid any notion of a conspiracy I’ll certainly have an element of ruthless pragmatism to them that is this work can be discredited then the problem may well go away. Well I can assure and you know this already Gary. The problem will not go away. We will not go away.  Certainly the children will not go away, and we will not be deterred from providing care and help for them.

            No.  And this is another myth has been circulated.  After Brian Deer broke his story in 2004 which again was a series of false allegations Richard Horton the editor of The Lancet suggested that we – he encouraged us. He urged us to offer a retraction of an interpretation not of the findings.  Not of the bowel disease or the histories or the neurological findings in these children, but of the interpretation that MMR vaccine was causally associated with autism. Well that interpretation was never made in the paper. So how can you retract a possibility or indeed an interpretation that was not made by us?  In fact we said this – the findings in this paper do not – are not proof of causation of an association between MMR vaccine and the syndrome described.  That is bowel disease and autism.  So we’re not talking about a lack of association of a causal association.  We’re saying lack of an association at all.  There are grounds however for initiating a program of research to determine whether there is a real association and that is what we urged. So the retraction of the interpretation was far more a position of political posturing than it was anything to do with the science. And three of my coauthors refused to participate in that process.  It has however been used and put out there amongst the media as a retraction of the paper, a discrediting of the paper.  It is not.  And Dr. Horton has himself confirmed that the findings in the paper stand.

Second response from Wakefield

Just a few things to say, Gary.  One is that in regards to replication this is a common argument that no one has ever replicated our findings.  In fact they have as far a field as Venezuela. Dr. Gonzalez has reproduced the bowel disease extensively and Dr. Basuler (sp?) in Turin as well as Dr. Kriegsman (sp?)and others, and so that is false. The other thing is in relation to the availability of the single vaccine, and I did not discourage parents from vaccinating that’s suggested as you say that they – the option of the single vaccines should be made available to parents.  I’m accused by Dr. Offit, Dr. Paul Offit of making that statement when there was no single vaccine available in the UK. That is in fact false.  I made the suggestion in February, 1998 and the license for implication of the vaccine as Dr. Yazback (sp?) has said was removed in August of 1998, and it was removed in order to enact an our way or no way policy, and that was unfortunate and unethical because parents who had genuine concerns about the safety of MMR vaccine were no longer able to vaccinate your children.  I asked Dr. Elizabeth Miller why they had done this.  She is one of the principle architects of vaccine policy in the UK and she said because if we didn’t parents would opt for the single vaccine and it would ruin our vaccination – our MMR vaccination program.  So the priority was the program and not the wellbeing of children.  That is somewhat alarming. 

So Dr. Offit may wish to – I’ve offered to debate him publicly on the various claims that he’s made in his book and about me, and so far he has declined to take me up on that. So Dr. Offit once again I’d be delighted to engage in a public debate about MMR vaccine safety with you. And again the claims made by Brian Deer about me are false, and the monster (?) be false and they were known to be false to him at the time that they were made, and that again is unfortunate because the people who suffer from this are the children and the denial of access to care, the appropriate medical care of these children is reprehensible and people can say or think what they like about me. That is irrelevant.  What matters is that we do the right thing by these children and indeed for future children who may avoid problems if we do the right thing now and we face what is effectively a societal tragedy whereby continued an understandable loss of confidence in vaccine regulators.  This is something that a major error that is made by the – people are not anti-vaccine.  What they are is anti regulators who distort the truth or who misrepresent the facts or who are not punished with them in as you said (?) vaccine safety issues. So it is not anti-vaccine, but it is something far more insidious and dangerous and that is the loss of confidence in the very system that is meant to protect them.  So we need to act now. We need to try and diffuse the situation and to come together to resolve it and we seem to be as far from that now as we ever were. 

I look forward to seeing that, Gary. Thank you.