|
Dr. Andrew Wakefield was terminated from
his position this weekend for no other reason than reporting
the truth of his findings critical of the safety of the MMR
vaccine.
Whenever ignorance,
envy, greed and suppression dominate
the business of a state (or a profession), there will always
be heroes who step forward to challenge the status quo. They
are usually individuals who lead ordinary lives until, one
day, they are faced with an extraordinary situation and make
a conscious decision to do the right thing no matter what
price they have to pay.
Andrew Wakefield, a brilliant young British
gastroenterologist rising quickly in the ranks of his peers,
made a conscious decision in 1997 that he could not turn away
from a truth he had discovered during the course of his scientific
research, even though he knew it could cost him his career.
When he realized the lives of children
depended upon his having the courage to refuse to remain silent
about the association he found between MMR vaccine and autism,
he chose to do what was right instead of do what was safe.
Now he is paying the price being exacted
by a scientific profession and militarized public health infrastructure
that cannot tolerate independent thought and scientific investigation
for fear it will lead to change.
Like all those involved in perpetuating
totalitarian systems that suppress free thought, expression
and action, those who have tried to silence and
destroy Andrew Wakefield have only succeeded in revealing
to the people how afraid they are of what he has to say.
Dr. Wakefield will not only survive what
they have done, he will triumph over it. The truth about vaccines
and neuroimmune damage, like autism, will shine bright and
clear in the end, no matter how many try to hide it because
of the courage of individuals like Andrew Wakefield.
When he started work at the Royal Free
Hospital Medical School in 1987 Dr. Wakefield was the man
everyone wanted to know.
The doctor, who studied at St. Mary's
Hospital in west London and trained in bowel transplantation
at the University of Toronto, arrived with plans to investigate
the cause of two devastating inflammatory bowel diseases:
Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
Throughout the early 1990s his research
was supported by grants worth millions from pharmaceutical
companies and charities.
These began to fall away when, in 1995,
he published a study suggesting that measles vaccination could
be a risk factor for the bowel illnesses, the first warning
that his research produced unpopular results.
He was unprepared, however, for the opprobrium
that ensued when in 1998 he published a medical paper in The
Lancet, reporting that he and his colleagues had identified
a previously unknown combination of bowel disease and autism
in 12 children.
Bowel symptoms
are common in autistic children but had until then been regarded
as simply a manifestation of their behavioral problems.
The finding that these children had real
and severe bowel disease was a groundbreaking discovery. Had
the paper stuck to these facts alone Dr. Wakefield might still
be in a job.
Against the advice of others in the team,
however, he insisted that their joint paper record that eight
parents said their previously normal child had fallen ill
after receiving the MMR inoculation - a mixture of weakened
but live measles, mumps and rubella virus given to a 1.5 million
children a year.
The result was uproar and with each piece
of research the doctor has announced since - including evidence
of measles virus infection in damaged bowel tissue from some
of the children - the louder the medical establishment's condemnation
of him has grown.
When Dr. Wakefield said in January that
he had now seen 170 children with the bowel effects and autism,
and that a majority of the parents involved had said their
children fell ill after being given the MMR vaccine, the Department
of Health's response was to launch a £3 million publicity
campaign to reassure parents that it is safe.
The Department of Health said parents
often first noticed signs of autism in their children around
the time MMR is usually given but that did not mean the two
were connected. A spokesman said: "Our view is that the
triple vaccine is the safest way to protect children against
three potentially serious diseases."
Yesterday Dr. Wakefield said he still
did not regret his decision to get involved in the MMR controversy.
"Losing a London hospital teaching job doesn't do much
for my CV but there are bigger issues at stake," he said.
"What
matters now most of all is what happens to these children."
Dawn Richardson,
PROVE (Parents Requesting
Open Vaccine Education)
| 