Dr. Andrew Wakefield arrives in London on July 16, 2007 to face a disciplinary panel investigating allegations of misconduct. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

(CBS/AP) Dr. Andrew Wakefield is either the victim of  “a ruthless, pragmatic attempt to crush any attempt to investigate valid vaccine safety concerns” as he describes it or a huckster paid by lawyers in 1998 to falsify an autism study to make it appear vaccines were to blame for the disorder. the lawyers later sued the vaccine makers.

The huckster version of events is described in a British Medical Journal piece released this month which rips apart Wakefield’s study and his motivation for writing it.

“Such clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare,” said BMJ’s editor-in-chief Dr. Fiona Godlee in a statement.

The 1998 study, which appeared in the prestigious British journal the Lancet, was groundbreaking when it came out. Wakefield examined 12 children with regressive autism – they were developing normally and then went awry. Wakefield said their symptoms appeared soon after receiving a vaccination for measles mumps and rubella called an MMR. In rich nations, almost all children receive the shot.

Wakefield, a gastroenterologist, hypothesized that the vaccine caused both the autism symptoms and gut problems.

Parents with autistic children, desperate to find it’s cause and a cure, quickly rallied around Wakefield’s study. Vaccination rates dropped in Britain as well as the United States. New cases of measles rose.

And so did the cases of autism or at least its diagnosis.

Later studies tried to replicate Wakefield’s findings, but could not. Debate raged about the root causes of autism.

But the BMJ investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that five of the 12 children in Wakefield’s paper had symptoms before the MMR shots. one girl turned out to have a heart disorder. her symptoms disappeared after it was treated. the report claims three of the children turned out to not have autism at all and only one was eventually diagnosed with the regressive form of it described in Wakefield’s paper.

The report also alleges that Wakefield falsified timeliness and when investigators showed Wakefield’s study to parents of the children involved, some claimed he misrepresented their stories.

Perhaps most damagingly, the report claims Wakefield developed his autism vaccine theory only after he was hired by lawyers planning to sue vaccine makers. BMJ claims he was paid more than half-a-million dollars for his efforts.

On Wednesday, Wakefield fired back. Speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he claimed the report’s author was “a hit man who has been brought in to take me down” by big pharma.

According to the network, Deer signed a disclosure form claiming he has no financial interest in the matter, but freely admits he was paid by BMJ for his reporting.

“That’s what journalists do,” he told CNN.

Last year, the Lancet formally retracted Wakefield’s study. ten of the 13 authors had earlier done the same.  Wakefield has since been stripped of his medical license in Britain.

But for Wakefield’s supports, the battle drags on.

“I cannot imagine for a second that Dr. Wakefield would have any reason to falsify data,” Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association, told CNN. “He’s a man of integrity and honesty and truly wants to find the answers for millions of children who have been affected by autism.”

What has been obvious to skeptics for years has finally become obvious to all: The supposed link between vaccines and autism is a sham perpetrated in the name of litigation. in a scathing series of articles and editorial in the British Medical Journal, researcher Andrew Wakefield, who wrote an influential Lancet article in 1998 suggesting vaccines cause autism, has been exposed as a fraud. What’s worse, he was paid by lawyers to perpetrate his fraud, more than $675,000 over two years.

Wakefield’s theories and the shoddy research performed by a British lab helped fuel a similar wave of litigation in the U.S. with total disregard for the risk of needless injury and death they were helping to cause, trial lawyers and cheerleaders like Robert Kennedy peddled the story that the preservative thimerosol, containing minute traces of mercury, was the cause of an explosion in autism diagnoses. what they never said was this was a theory tailor-made for litigation. Science designed to serve the courtroom.

The lawyers had a problem, you see. Congress, recognizing that vaccines will injure and kill a predictable number of people each year while saving many more, passed a law in 1986 taking away the right to sue vaccine manufacturers in standard courts. The cases were funneled to a special vaccine court where damages would be paid out according to a schedule. Lawyers didn’t like that, preferring the potentially much larger verdicts they could get from a jury. So they began looking for a way around the vaccine court, and thought they found it with thimerosol, which by their reasoning wasn’t an active ingredient of the vaccine and thus wasn’t covered under the law.

As typically happens in high-stakes litigation, experts came out of the woodwork to supply the evidence the lawyers needed. and Wakefield was the champion, publishing the Lancet study that purported to show how vaccines had caused autism in 12 patients. According to investigative journalist Brian Deer, three of the 12, it turns out, had never been diagnosed with autism and others displayed symptoms long before they received vaccines. Deer cites a confidential memo from the lawyer who recruited Wakefield, setting out the researcher’s goals before he began:

He has deeply depressing views about the effect of vaccines on the nation’s children. he is also anxious to arrange for tests to be carried out on any children . . . who are showing symptoms of possible Crohn’s disease. The following are signs to look for. If your child has suffered from all or any of these symptoms could you please contact us, and it may be appropriate to put you in touch with Dr Wakefield.

The effects of this sham were widespread, and unconscionable. Vaccination levels plunged as low as 80% in the U.K., according to BMJ, well below the 95% needed to insure herd immunity. in 2008 measles was declared endemic in Britain and Wales, for the first time in 14 years, and the journal notes “hundreds of thousands of children in the UK are currently unprotected as a result of the scare.”

Parents in the U.S. followed the same course, without once being told by the lawyers that it was, in fact, a legal gambit and not a valid scientific theory.

The legal gambit has largely been demolished through a series of rulings by the vaccine court establishing first, that thimerosol is not an “adulterant” or “additive” lying outside the law and finally with the Cedillo decision in August. That decision by a three-judge appeals panel declared what would have been clear from the beginning, had Wakefield’s research methods and payments from lawyers been disclosed — that the case suffered from a “fatal deficiency:  …the lack of any persuasive evidence that the measlesvaccine can contribute to the causation of autism or gastrointestinal dysfunction.”

What makes this case particularly disturbing is that none of the outcry that accompanied the Vioxx scandal or other drug scares has erupted here. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children have been needlessly exposed to injury or death to serve a flawed legal strategy and the lawyers are silent. Maybe because there’s nobody with deep pockets to sue.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 18, 2010) — People can be reassured that while alcohol may slow down digestion after a rich calorific meal, enjoyed by many during the Christmas season, it will not cause indigestion symptoms such as heartburn, belching and bloating, finds research in the Christmas issue published in the British Medical Journal.

In order to determine the effects of alcohol on the digestive system when rich meals are consumed, investigators at the University Hospital of Zurich, led by Dr mark Fox now at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, studied 20 individuals who either drank wine or black tea with cheese fondue followed by cherry liqueur or water as a digestive after the famous Swiss dish.

Fox and colleagues say that while they concentrated on fondue the results of their research "can be generalised to address the wider issue of alcohol’s effects on digestion and digestive comfort after any large, rich meal of the kind we all enjoy over the festive season."

Twenty healthy volunteers (14 male and six female) aged between 23 and 58 took part in the study. None of the participants had a history of alcohol misuse or stomach disease. they had an average body mass index (BMI) of 23.6 and none were taking prescription medicine.

The participants were tested on two days at least one week apart. half of the group drank white wine with their fondue and the other half drank black tea. This was followed by a cherry liqueur digestive (schnapps) or water 90 minutes later.

The research team used established scientific breath tests to assess the effects of alcohol consumption on the digestive system.

The results show that the process of digestion was much slower in the group that drank alcohol with their fondue. However the results also demonstrate that alcohol did not contribute to an increase in indigestion problems such as heartburn, belching and bloating.

The authors conclude that "healthy readers should be reassured that they can continue to enjoy this traditional meal with the beverage of their choice without undue concern about postprandial digestive discomfort.

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Story Source:

the above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

1. Henriette Heinrich et al. Effect on gastric function and symptoms of drinking wine, black tea, or schnapps with a Swiss cheese fondue: randomised controlled crossover trial. BMJ, 2010; 341:c6731 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.c6731

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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