REPLACE Dissenting Voices Silenced

NOT FINAL NOT FINAL NOT FINAL

Real science isn't biased and doesn't look for a particular result. But when it comes to research related to vaccines, any results that don't conform to the “settled science” have been routinely and summarily dismissed. In many cases, researchers discovered problems with vaccines when they hadn't intended to study them at all; their research led them to identify vaccines as a concern only after ruling out other theories.

While you would have thought these findings would be taken seriously by the medical and regulatory establishment and led to further research, the researchers' conclusions were most often dismissed or falsely debunked, then written off without further investigation or explanation. This is obviously a travesty not only for those researchers whose careers have suffered as a result, but for the scientific method itself.

Below are a handful of scientists – some vilified, others simply ignored – who have raised the alarm about vaccines.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield

There is no more polarizing figure in the vaccine debate than Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who in the early 1990’s was a prominent gastrointestinal surgeon in the U.K. with a specialty in inflammatory bowel disease. During his career, Dr. Wakefield was also emerging as world expert on measles, performing cutting edge research on the possible connection between autism and gastrointestinal disease.

In 1993, he published a study, “Evidence of persistent measles virus infection in Crohn’s disease” and coauthored a 1995 article published in U.K. medical journal The Lancet, “Is measles vaccine a risk factor for inflammatory bowel disease?”, which caught the attention of several families who believed their children’s medical conditions were caused by the measles vaccine, and reached out to him requesting additional information and studies be performed. Subsequently, along with his colleague, Professor John Walker-Smith, one of the world’s leading pediatric gastroenterologists, Dr. Wakefield began studying the group of patients known as the “Lancet 12”, who had been diagnosed with both autism and gastrointestinal disease.

In 1998, shortly before the results of the study were to be published in another article in The Lancet (this one along with 12 other scientist co-authors), St. Mary’s Medical School held a press conference to discuss the study. The article stated that the study “did not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described” but that “Virological studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue.”

During the press conference, when asked directly about his opinion on the safety of the MMR vaccine, Dr. Wakefield gave an honest answer: that he had concerns about the safety of the “triple jab” MMR, and recommended that until further safety studies could be conducted, that patients receive each of the three vaccines individually, which he believed had fewer negative outcomes. In other words, Dr. Wakefield never suggested that parents not vaccinate their children. He merely recommended the safer “three separate shots” option.

The press conference immediately caught the attention of vaccine advocates, who moved to actually remove the single-component Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccines from the U.K. market altogether, forcing the hands of parents toward the single-dose MMR vaccine that he was so concerned about.

Dr. Wakefield’s audacity to publicly question the safety of vaccines destroyed his professional reputation and livelihood. He has been accused of scientific and medical misconduct, following unethical practices, and fraud.  But a reasoned and unbiased look at the accusations show that they simply do not stand. Read the piece by Mary Holland for a clear and thorough debunking of the accusations against him: https://vaxxedthemovie.com/who-is-dr-andrew-wakefield/.

To this day, Dr. Wakefield remains a tireless advocate for children with autism and their families.

A related article about the treatment of his colleague Professor Walker-Smith is also worth the read http://www.neuraldynamicsubc.ca/1._Exoneration_Walker-Smith.pdf.

Dr. William Thompson

In 2001, Dr. William Thompson, a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, began working on a study that would investigate a possible relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism, called Age at First Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccination in Children with Autism and School-matched Control Subjects: A Population-Based Study in Metropolitan Atlanta. The study protocol called for a short, straight-forward data analysis.

However, when a causal relationship was uncovered between the MMR and autism while following the protocol’s original design, rather than pursuing further studies, the CDC deviated from the plan, and continued to re-work and manipulate the data – removing from its dataset many of the problematic cases – until a satisfactory result was reached. In other words, they cooked the results to make the vaccine appear safe. In 2004, the study was published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Fast-forward to 2013, when Dr. Thompson’s conscience pushed him to make a phone call to epidemiologist and bioengineer Dr. Brian Hooker.  Between 2013 and 2014, the two men spoke over the phone more than 40 times, with Dr. Thompson divulging the malfeasance of the CDC and walking Dr. Hooker through the complex process to request and acquire the original data set included in the CDC study so it could be analyzed independently and his claims could be verified.

Dr. Brian Hooker reanalyzed the CDC’s data and uncovered two key findings:

  1. A statistically significant increase in the risk of autism for children who received the MMR vaccine before 36 months of age.

  2. The increased risk was greatest for African-American males, who were 3.4 times more likely to develop autism when vaccinated with MMR prior to 36 months, compared to matched controls.

The CDC had clearly reached the same conclusion before the study was released, because it was included in a presentation given to the IOM in 2004 by one of the study’s leads, Frank DeStefano, which states “Children with autism were more likely to be vaccinated before 36 months of age compared to matched controls.” However, when the final paper was published in Pediatrics, that information was conveniently omitted.  See pages 35 and 39 of the IOM presentation.

In taped conversations, Thompson expressed great remorse for his part in the fraud:

“Oh my God, I did not believe that we did what we did, but we did. It’s all there… This is the lowest point in my career, that I went along with that paper. I have great shame now when I meet families of kids with autism, because I have been part of the problem … We’ve missed ten years of research because the CDC is so paralyzed right now by anything related to autism. They’re not doing what they should be doing because they’re afraid to look for things that might be associated.”

 When the audio recordings of their conversations were put on the internet, Dr. Thompson released a public statement, through his lawyer, that did not deny the nature of the conversations, and reaffirmed the concerns he had raised to Dr. Hooker:

I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.

I want to be absolutely clear that I believe vaccines have saved and continue to save countless lives. […]

My concern has been the decision to omit relevant findings in a particular study for a particular sub­ group for a particular vaccine. There have always been recognized risks for vaccination and I believe it is the responsibility of the CDC to properly convey the risks associated with receipt of those vaccines.

Dr. Hooker released his own statement, reiterating many key points, including the following:

  • CDC scientists colluded to cover up a relationship between the timing of the MMR vaccine and autism in African Americans that was first discovered in November of 2001. Rather than reporting the results to the public, all data regarding this relationship were destroyed at a secret meeting held some time in August/September of 2002. This fact has been affirmed via an affidavit given by Dr. Thompson to Rep. Bill Posey in September, 2014.

  • Dr. Thompson attempted to warn the CDC Director at the time, Dr. Julie Gerberding, regarding this relationship, prior to the February 2004 Institute of Medicine meeting on vaccines and autism. Rather than allowing Dr. Thompson to present the information at this meeting, Dr. Gerberding replaced him as a speaker with Dr. Frank Destefano, current director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, where he presented fraudulent results regarding the MMR vaccine and autism. Dr. Thompson was put on administrative leave and was threatened that he would be fired due to “insubordination.”

Dr. Hooker’s Reanalysis of CDC Data on Autism Incidence and Time of First MMR Vaccination was published in December  2018 in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

As a protective measure, Dr. Thompson has been granted official Whistleblower status and protection.

-----------

Note 1: the original “raw” data set used by the CDC in the MMR study can be made available for reanalysis and further examination.

Note 2: this is not the only study that has shown that black children have a greater risk of harm from vaccines. Notably:

     

Dr. Andrew Zimmerman

In 2007, Dr. Zimmerman (a Pediatric Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital) was hired as an expert witness on the side of the government in a case in the “Vaccine Court”. Because of the large number of cases submitted to the court claiming the MMR caused their child’s autism, the cases had been combined in a sort of class action “Omnibus” preceding. Dr. Zimmerman was to testify that the MMR could not cause autism. However, according to an affidavit signed by Dr. Zimmerman on September 7, 2018, what actually unfolded was the following:

Three days before I was scheduled to testify, I spoke with DOJ attorneys about my revised opinion, that there may be a subset of children who are at risk for regression if they have underlying mitochondrial dysfunction and are simultaneously exposed to factors that stress their mitochondrial reserve (which is critical for the developing brain). Such factors might include infections, as well as metabolic and immune factors, and vaccines. I was subsequently asked by the DOJ not to testify

 

The attorneys dismissed Dr. Zimmerman, misrepresented his expert position in the trial, and won the case.

As a result of losing the omnibus proceeding, families can no longer present a case to vaccine court for autism resulting from the MMR.

Read his affidavit here: https://www.scribd.com/document/397687168/Zimmerman-Statement

  

Peter Gøtzsche

In 1993, Danish physician Peter Gøtzsche co-founded The Cochrane Collaboration, a British charity whose goal was to review medical research findings in order to make recommendations regarding healthcare practices for professionals, patients, and policy makers. Part of its core foundation was a focus on independence – both in terms of autonomy of the partner centers that were part of the group, and for the research itself. Over time he became troubled at the changing culture and focus of the group’s leadership, emphasizing brand and business results over good science. He was most alarmed by their lack of concern over conflicts of interest of its reviewers, and drafted a policy that would prevent Cochrane authors from having a commercial interest in the interventions they were assessing.

In 2016, he was voted onto Cochrane’s governing board with the most votes of all candidates, despite having explicitly raised concerns about the administration and management of the group in his election statement.  He was well known for his dedication to unbiased reviews.

While at Cochrane, Gøtzsche succeeded in receiving randomized trial data from the European Medicine Agency, and concluded from it that HPV vaccines could cause serious neurological damage. He presented his findings in October 2018 and gave an unflattering review of the findings of another Cochrane reviewer.

Instead of protecting Gøtzsche and upholding the integrity of his work, he was expelled from Cochrane and fired from Denmark’s Rigshospitalet Hospital, where he had served as well respected chief physician for many years. His firing was so upsetting and against the spirit that was the guiding principles of Cochrane, that four Board members quit, and over 8,000 people signed a petition to the Danish health ministry objecting to his treatment, including such prominent figures as Sir Iain Chalmers (Cochrane co-founder), Fiona Godlee (The British Medical Journal’s editor-in-chief), Margrete Auken (a Member of the European Parliament who has worked to make data available to researchers), David Healy (a highly respected psychiatrist and one of the world’s leading experts on psychiatric drugs), and John Ioannidis (a heavily-cited and well-respected health researcher from Stanford University). Gøtzsche describes his dismissal as “scientific judicial murder”. In the public letter objecting to his dismissal he states clearly:

The case is one of principles because it is about one of the heaviest areas in healthcare: beneficial and harmful effects of medicines and other medical technologies. If you can easily get rid of inconvenient people and thus their research and participation in the academic debate, it can have serious consequences both for community health and economics.

 

In 2019 Gøtzsche founded the Institute for Scientific Freedom, which has three visions:

  1. All science should strive to be free from financial conflicts of interest.

  2. All science should be published as soon as possible, and made freely accessible.

  3. All scientific data, including study protocols, should be freely accessible, allowing others to do their own analyses.

Two videos from the March 2019 Symposium about Scientific Freedom (and the inauguration of the Institute for Scientific Freedom) are truly enlightening:

Ø  Gøtzsche’s presentation, Death of a whistleblower: scientific censorship in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmPwqeC4E4

Ø  Dr. Peter Aaby’s presentation, WHO is the brain in the system (subtitled “The sound of silence? A case study of how public health vaccinology deals with fundamental contradictions of current policy.” Also titled “Most of you think we know what our vaccines are doing – we don’t.” on YouTube) https://youtu.be/NPNHYAevTwg 

  


 

Bernadine Healy

An important “insider” voice for rational vaccine policy is Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of the National Institutes of Health. In a 2008 interview with CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson, Dr. Healy summed up the problem with the willful ignorance of our regulatory bodies perfectly:

 

“When I first heard that there was a link between autism and vaccines, I thought “Well, that's silly.” Really, I mean I tended to dismiss it just on the superficial kind of reading, or you know, just reading what was in the papers - no offense to the media -  so when I first heard about it I thought “Well, that doesn't make sense to me.” The more you delve into it - if you look at the basic science - if you look at the research that's been done, in animals- if you also look at some of these individual cases - and, if you look at the evidence that there is no link - what I come away with is: The question has not been answered.

This is the time when we do have the opportunity to understand whether or not there are susceptible children, perhaps genetically, perhaps they have a metabolic issue, mitochondrial disorder, immunological issue that makes them more susceptible to vaccines, plural, or to one particular vaccine, or to a component of vaccines, like mercury. So we now, in these times, have to take another look at that hypothesis - not deny it. I think we have the tools today that we didn’t have 10 years ago. That we didn’t have 20 years ago … to try and tease that out and find out if indeed there is that susceptible group.

Why is this important? A susceptible group does not mean that vaccines aren’t good. What a susceptible group will tell us is that maybe there is a group of individuals or a group of children that shouldn’t have a particular vaccine or shouldn’t have vaccines on the same schedule. I do not believe that if we identified a susceptibility group, if we identified a particular risk factor for vaccines, or if we found out that maybe they should be spread out a little longer, I do not believe that the public would lose faith in vaccines […]

It is the job of the public health community - and of physicians - to be out there and to say, “Yes, we can make it safer, because we are able to say, this is a subset, we’re going to deliver it in a way that we think is safer.” […]

I think the government or certain public health officials in the government have been too quick to dismiss the concerns of these families without studying the population that got sick. I haven’t seen major studies that focus on [perhaps] 300 kids who got autistic symptoms within a period of a few weeks of a vaccine. I think that the public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational, without sufficient studies of causation. I think they have often been too quick to dismiss studies in the animal laboratory, either in mice, in primates, that do show some concerns with regard to certain vaccines and also to the mercury preservative in vaccines. The government has said in a report by the Institute of Medicine […] in a report in 2004, it basically said, “Do not pursue susceptibility groups. Don’t look for those patients, those children who may be vulnerable.

I really take issue with that conclusion. The reason why they didn’t want to look for those susceptibility groups was because they were afraid that if they found them, however big or small they were, that that would scare the public away. First of all, I think the public’s smarter than that, the public values vaccines, but more importantly I don’t think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis because you’re afraid of what it might show.

 

Read the CBS News article here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-open-question-on-vaccines-and-autism

Watch the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZFPpHBNp2M