In 2007 Dr Andrew Wakefield And Professors Simon Murch and John Walker Smith were
called to the General medical council to face charges of professional misconduct
In His Own Words Dr Andrew WakeField and the GMC
Why Have you Been Called to the GMC?
Why is this hearing being held at all in front of the
medical regulatory body of the united kingdom
and who bought the case and what is the case?
The case, it seems, on the face of it, was brought by a single complaint
by a freelance journalist who had been working for the Sunday Times, and others,
had been trying trying to uncover some misdemeanor on our behalf
at the royal free in the investigation of children with regressive autism
with bowel problems, many of the parents of whom said their children regressed after the
measles mumps rubella vaccine
and i will just take you back because when I began this work in 1995
parents approached me and said my child was developing perfectly normally
they had their MMR vaccine, I wasn't anti-vaccine, I took
them along, they had their vaccine according to the routine
schedule and then the lights went out
their eyes glazed over, they lost speech, they lost
interaction, they stopped playing with their siblings
they never smiled, they were grizzly,
and eventually having lost skills and become mute and self injurious,
they were diagnosed with autism or atypical autism.
And I said, I am terribly sorry, I know nothing about autism,
how can I possibly help, and they said, well, my child has
terrible bowel problems, diarrhoea, pain, I know they
are in pain, they can't tell me they are in pain
because they have lost the ability to speak, but I know
they are in pain, my instinct as a mother tells me my
child is in pain, they are screaming, they are drawing their knees up to their chest,
particularly bad when they have to have their bowel opened.
Losing weight, failing to thrive
and the doctor says your child is autistic,
that is just the way it is. Well that is not
just the way it is, that is not what autism is
these are children who are sick, who are clearly unwell.
So we put the autism to one side and we said how do we manage these children if they
had these symptoms and they were developmentally normal
and we would investigate? And so we decided we would
and over the course of many months
we put together a protocol a clinical protocol for the investigation of
these children. What
investigations do these children need in order
for us to unearth the origin of their problem
for example
do we do a colonoscopy to investigate their bowel problems,
are the bowel problems linked to the behaviour?
Because the parents were reporting when my child's bowel is bad
when they are in pain, their behaviour is terrible,
they can't concentrate, they are at their worst
autistically and their all their autistic mannerisms
get worse when their
intestine is bad and gets better when their intestine improves
and this was intriguing to us as gastroenterologists because we had seen this before
in other gastrointestinal diseases
there are Gastrointestinal inflammatory diseases like Celiac disease or
bacterial overgrowth when you lose a lot of your small
intestinal, and you are just left with a little bit behind
where bowel bacteria overgrowth leads to
to deterioration in behaviour what is called encephalopathy
and often even progressing to coma
and the way you treat that is to treat the bowel
get rid of the bugs in the bowel
and the behaviour improves. So we had seen it before, this gut brain link, something in
the bowel affecting the brain
and treating the bowel helping the brain, so why was this different? Was this a similar
process was for example some form of intoxication
some bacterial by-product coming from the intestine and injuring the brain, rather like
drinking alcohol you drink alcohol it gets throught the gut
it injures the brain or affects the brain, affects behaviour
so this was no different, it is not difficult, it is
not rocket science, very very straightforward. was Something
going on in the gut primarily, and injures the brain, so this was an entirely reasonable
idea to look at
The other thing is these children had regressed in the face of a viral insult
they had been given a live viral vaccine, they had been given viruses
which were known to be able to infect the brain and cause inflammation in the brain
and to cause for example autism
So it was entirely appropriate that they would undergo
a series of investigations and we combine that
in a single protocol with some experimental investigations
in other words could we find in a laboratory setting evidence of measles virus
in the inflamed intestine Research
So combining as we should do in an academic
institution like the royal free clinical investigation
with research
and as we progress through the process thereby refining
the clinical investigation. This is necessary, that isn't,
this is telling us something, this isn't, out that goes
and then refining the process, so we were getting
the maximum amount of information
from investing in these children for the minimum inconvenience
and risk to the child, and that is just good medicine
So during this process I was approached by some lawyers
who were acting on behalf of these children
investigating the parental claim that their child
had regressed, disappeared, become autistic after a vaccine
and they said to me, would you help us? You have an interest in Crohn's disease and
measles virus, measles vaccine
We are now seeing these new children
what do you think, can you help us in this process and
i thought about it I thought long and hard about it
and I decided that I would
and I later wrote to my colleagues explaining my reason for doing so
and my feeling was this, it was very straightforward
Vaccination is designed for the greater good
to protect the majority
and it does so at the expense of a minority
and that minority of children
are those who are damaged by the vaccine and that
we don't know the size of that number
because it has never been investigated properly, but nonetheless, even if you accept
that is a permissible ethical approach that we can protect majority of the expense of
the minority, then that minority
are a group of children who have paid the price
for protecting the rest of society
and therefore society has an absolute moral
and ethical obligation to care for those children
for the rest of their lives, period. That is it
there is no escaping that moral imperative and yet
to acknowledge those children in a public health setting
is to raise doubts about the safety of vaccines
and therefore it is much better to put them in a corner
and forget about them to pretend they simply don't exist
That is what had happened to these children
The studies that had been designed to look at safety had been designed in such a
way as they would never capture these children, nor
did anyone want to capture them, nor was anyone
interested in the parents story when they said
my child has regressed after a vaccine.
They were just put in a corner, told it couldn't happen
and never investigated and that was absolutely unacceptable So
So, the other thing that happened, around the same time, is a parent
called me, she is the mother of two autistic children from the Midlands, and she
was an older parent, and she had a husband who was older than she was
He was infirm and she herself had arthritis.
And she called me one day and she said doctor Wakefield.
Please don't be judgmental
don't judge me harshly she said, but when I die
I am taking my children with me
and I thought long and hard about that, and I wasn't in any way judgemental, in fact
quite the opposite
I was struck. She said to me, Dr Wakefield, no one else cares about my children
i'm the only person who loves them
and when I die or become infirm to the extent that I can no longer care for them
they are going to be lost, they are going to be on
the street and they are going to die on the street
because the world doesn't care. And she was right
she was absolutely right
there's nothing for these children then you'll know that in the Thatcher era
all the long stay institutions, the old asylums
were closed down and turned into luxury apartments
and there is nothing left
It is care in the community, what does that mean?
It just means shoving people with long term
mental disabilities out into the community where they
can injure themselves or injure other people
or whatever. Who knows? who follows them? who cares?
And that was a future for these children
so, I decided at that point that I would help the lawyers
because if nothing else I was in a position to
look at this scientifically objectively and
provide an answer that would, or would not
take this story forward but would nonetheless give
these children access to the due process of justice
and that is what they had been denied
and so it was about access to justice
and surely that cannot be denied anyone
you would think, in a civilised society.
So So the lawyers asked me what we should do
how would you go about in a scientific context
taking this to the next step
determining whether this temporal association that the mother has made between
child's exposure to this vaccine and regression, how would you
then further link that if possible to the virus
and I said the bowel disease that we have seen in these children
and in Crohn's disease looks like an infectious disease
and you would look for evidence of the virus in sites of infection
or obvious swelling of the lymph glands, there is one site in the intestine
like swelling of the tonsils
when you get a sore throat, you would look in the
tonsil for the organism that was causing it, so
So if you have got swelling of the lymph glands in the intestine
look in there for evidence of the virus
and measles was a virus that was known to cause this kind of swelling
of the intestinal lymph glands
So it made logical sense to look in those those areas
and so we set up a study i was asked to design a study that would
take this to that level that we would get funding from the legal aid board hypothetically
and then we would look for evidence of the virus in the intestine
and after a series of exchanges, and a protocol was prepared
we received acknowledgement of funding from the Legal aid board
to conduct that study. It is was negative it was negative, if
it was positive it was positive, either way it got published
It was not designed to produce a particular answer
it was just designed to produce
an answer, is the virus there, or not?
It didn't make it causation but it was a piece, a crucial
piece of the jigsaw that took it to the next level.
Interestingly
the dean made contact with me, the Dean of the medical school
Professor Ari Zuckerman world-renowned virologist an expert in Hepatitis B
worked very closely with the world health organization was
deeply involved with hepatitis B vaccination
a great advocate of hepatitis B vaccination
different story, but nonetheless, there he was in the
general apparatchik of the vaccine advocates
and he said to me that he had been contacted
by the Department of Health and a certain members of the
Royal College of Child Health
who had made him aware of this funding, and I said yes, this
is a grant we got from them and it is perfectly respectable
and we are conducting the science he said there is
a conflict of interest there is a clear conflict of interest
and i couldn't understand why?
Why was there a conflict of interest? I had no conflict of interest
I was asked to take this grant to conduct a piece of science and give an answer
That wasn't a conflict of interest
The funding would be disclosed in the paper that
wrote up the science, the funding came from the Legal
Aid Board but beyond that where was the conflict
anyway
I wrote back to him and said your suggestion that
there is a conflict of interest has exercised
my mind greatly over the last several months and I cannot
see where it lies, and i laid out for him the context of
my discussions with the lawyers and the work that was to be done
and he wrote back to me and couldn't
precisely define what the conflict was, but talked about if a
legal action was anticipated, and
preliminary discussions had already taken place then
there was a conflict, and it didn't really make a lot of sense to me.
I wrote back to him again and reiterated
that we've been asked to
undertake a piece of science to wasn't seeking a particular answer
I wouldn't have got involved in the first place if there was any
effort of coercion or demanding that
we own the data, the lawyers didn't own it.
We would do what we felt was scientifically appropriate with it
and I had every faith in the lawyers, they seemed very
concerned, genuinely concerned about these children
they weren't in any way ambulance chasers but nonetheless there was some clear problem
for the Dean in this, and he ultimately refused
to take this money, and I said send it back
to the legal aid board send it back we don't want it
if you are not going to let us do this, we won't do it.
Anyway, one of my colleagues said we will put it into
an account at the hospital, a charitable account
hospital where grants were run and let's see if that's okay, so
we did now, interestingly the Dean has just appeared
as a witness on behalf of the prosecution at the GMC
Professor Ari Zuckerman, now 7 years retired and
clearly deeply frustrated that he should be dragged out of retirement to have to give
his evidence in this case, but nonetheless
his first foray was to say, yes, when this money was transferred
by the accountant of the Royal Free Medical School it was too late
I didn't know about it, it had already happened, I couldn't stop it
It is interesting that he actually signed the cheque for the transfer, Surprising that,
given the fact that it had already happened by the time he knew about it
nonetheless an interval of 11 years
can cloud ones mind memory of things There we are
But that was the first error he made
What he disclosed, interestingly
to me during that period was that he had written
to the ethics committee of the British Medial
Association (BMA), to take their advice how to deal
with this perplexing issue that was clearly causing him concern
about a conflict of interest that has was really unable to articulate to me
So he wrote to
Dr Armstrong at the BMA ethics committee to ask their opinion
and in it unbeknown to me at the time
he has said that he had been contacted
by the department of health who said to him that
the government stood to be sued by the parents
by the parents of children affected by MMR or apparently affected by MMR vaccine
and that this to him was a conflict of interest
That the government was going to be sued now
you have to understand i came into this with the lawyers believing the case was against
the vaccine manufacturers the government didn't even come into it
but he was clearly under the impression that the government
were going to be sued
He also said that this may be embarrassing for the medical school
Now, we were never party to the ultimate response of Dr Armstrong from the BMA
We were never told about it
All he did when he wrote back to me is to say you will know
that I have taken advice on this matter from the
british medical association
and leave it that, as though the BMA had ruled completely against it
When in fact we got the documents, as we did do as part of the
disclosure for the GMC, there it was, the letter from Dr Armstrong
not only endorsing the fact this study
could and should be done because it was morally and ethically
proper that it should be done but that not to do
it because it was embarrassing to an institution
or because it meant the government might be sued was not
a sound moral argument his words
So in other words the BMA ethics committee had said this is fine
It said actions of this kind or research of this kind is often funded by
a group with a particular interest
Of course they are, the Multiple Sclerosis Society
funds research for MS in the hope that it can make patients better
so here we have another
group of people with a vested interest funding a piece of research
As long as it is ethical, and as long as it is conducted
in a way that it is published, whether it is positive or negative then that is fine
nonetheless Prof Zuckerman did not get the answer that he wanted
He never disclosed that to us
he just kept beating us over the head with the
certain knowledge that he contacted the BMA and they had given him an opinion
sometime later i was working with the lawyers on
that faded into my distant memory
i was called by Richard Barr one of the lawyers and asked
if I would attend a meeting on Newcastle Train station
with a dr calling himself a man calling himself George
junior nothing more.
They had previous meetings with george at newcastle station
and the bottom line is on a sunday we got on a train went up Newcastle station
there we met with george and george would be wearing a red carnation
and indeed george was wearing a red carnation and we met with george and george
turned out to be the name of his son who was an actor and george was Dr. Alexander Torres
who was from the Scottish department of health
and Dr Torres had be seconded into
joint committee on vaccination and immunization and effectively from canada
and he had been brought in at least in part to advise on the introduction of MMR vaccine
the experience in canada was that they introduced a vaccine
which contained a Mumps component
made up of a strain of the vaccine called Urabe
that was originally generated in japan
and they have run into problems with this vaccine, it had produce meningitis in children
the mumps virus was identified in the spinal fluid around the brain of the children
and the vaccine was pulled
in canada it was pulled it was stopped in 1997 nonetheless
this was the vaccine that was intended to be introduced in the UK a year later 1988
did I say 1997, i mean 1987
It was the vaccine that was to be introduced in the UK in 1988
they changed the name the vaccine that was identical
so it had gone from Trivirix to Pluserix in the UK,
an identical vaccine that had already been withdrawn for safety reasons in canada
Now Torres advised the JCVI not to introduce this vaccine
because it was not safe. he was overruled
He said if you are going to introduce it then you should have active surveillance
That is doctors or people going out and asking have you seen and cases of the
following in the past month
not waiting for doctors to spontaneously report.
Spontaneous reporting picks up one to two percent
of the true adverse reactions and these are data from the
the food and drug administration in america
It is inadequate totally inadequateand they were overruled, no active surveillance
So they were going to intro a vaccine that has been
withdrawn in other countries, known to be unsafe
and they were going to have no active surveillance for
possible adverse events for that vaccine in this country
now this was done he said for competitive pricing reasons
The strain of the vaccine that contained
the dangerous mumps component was one quarter approximately the price
of the american vaccine MMRII made by Merck
there had been no reports of meningitis using the Merck vaccine
which contained a strain of mumps called Jeryl Lynn
derived from the daughter of the guy who actually isolated it the first place
Maurice Hilleman
So what we had was a cheaper vaccine that was known to be dangerous
so when the vaccine was licensed or there was the
proposal to licence this vaccine in the country
the joint committee or members of that committee went
to SmithKline Beecham and said we want your vaccine
SmithKline Beecham said we are not happy about this
because this has already been withdrawn in Canada
It has got this mumps component in it which is dodgy
they said if we're going to do it then we want an indemnity
we want indemnity from prosecution for damage to children
on the basis of the receipt of the vaccine
and it appears that indemnity was granted, and Torres
told us about this, and he said that at the meeting
the girl there from smithkline beecham said we are
immunising the children and the government are immunising us
so they entered into this relationship
the vaccine was produced, the vaccine was licensed, the vaccine was given
and cases of meningitis started to appear
they were recorded and documented in the minutes
of the JCVI which are now available on line
and have been obtained by us as part of this litigation
more and more of these cases started to be reported
the scottish department
withdrew this vaccine didn't want to give it in certain health areas
rejected the Urabe containing vaccine but still the JCVI continued with it
There was no withdrawal of this vaccine
until finally a study was grudgingly done in Nottingham where they found
that that was a much higher risk of this meningitis
with this vaccine than had previously been predicted
by passive surveillance, and the vaccine was withdrawn overnight
and it was only withdrawn overnight because it was leaked to the press
It appeared in a newspaper and suddenly the vaccine was pulled
So a dangerous vaccine, a knowingly dangerous vaccine was introduced
and ultimately proven to be dangerous and had to be withdrawn in 1992.
So two of the three vaccine brands that were introduced in 1988
had to be withdrawn for safety reasons
and yet Dr Salisbury in his statement to the general medical council sums up by
saying this is a vaccine legs entry safety record with an exemplary
safety record Well, if that is his idea of an excellent safety record
then we have a very different perception he and I of vaccine safety
and so we come full circle now
because it turns out that that dean was right
Ari Zuckerman was right
based upon the information that he got he says
probably from Dr Salisbury way back
when these parents that are coming to us in 1996 97
that it was the government who's going to be sued
i thought it was going to be the drug companies, but it wasn't
Why was it the government? Because the government have given
the drug company an indemnity against harm
and so this is why we're here this is what this is all about
this whole GMC affair an effort to discredit
doctors question the safety of the MMR vaccine
has come about because
of an indemnity given to the drug companies
all those years ago for the introduction of an unsafe vaccine
by perhaps just a few members of the department of health
or recommend by the department of health to the government
such that
a vaccine was introduced and when you ask now
and people have asked, was there an indemnity
is there any indemnity, no the answer is absolutely
categorically from David Salisbury, time and time again,
there was no indemnity, no letter of comfort nothing at all
by the government or the department of health or national health service
for the vaccine manufacturers and yet in the minutes of the JCVI
as late on in this story as 1997 there is an entry
that says, it talks about the various brands of vaccine that are available
and it says smithkline beecham continue to sell
the Urabe strain without liablity
there it is, in black and white in their own document.
I have been every which way around that statement and
cannot reconcile it to anything else other the fact that there was and remains
an indemnity and so i'm afraid this is really whole process
and the hope that one could
that my colleagues and i might be discredited before this information
ever became public in an effort to protect that original decision
that original flawed decision
and the consequences that have flowed from it
we find ourselves in this position now and that's fine
but it's not going to stop the truth coming
and you would think under those circumstances having withdrawn this vaccine in Australia
and canada and japan and the united kingdom that would be it
they would ditch it, get rid of it because it is not safe, but no
they go on making it and what do they do with it
they ship it out to the third world
and there was a mass vaccine campaign in Brazil in the 1990's
where they gave
the great majority of Brazilian children a revaccination with MMR
during a very short space of time
with the Urabe containing vaccine, which they knew
to be dangerous, and what it produced was an epidemic
of meningitis
a huge peak in the numbers of cases of meningitis,
and there was a paper written about it afterwards,
and one of the points in the discussion in the paper was
perhaps it's not a good idea
to do mass vaccination campaigns because it reveals the true
incidence of side effects to a vaccine who wrote that?
Who in God's name wrote that?
So this is, if you like, the
morality the integrity of the people you dealing with in this
Why is that vaccine even on the shelf?
Why is it being sold at cut price to third world countries?
What is the thinking behind this?
Because it is certainly not a moral imperative
it must be a commercial one
and so that's why we're here and that's where
we'll remain here and that's where we'll continue
to fight this kind of thing
because you can't treat people as expendable
You can't damage them and put them to one side.
Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf wrote
the greater truth excludes the lesser
and these children are the lesser truth
in the world or the mind of people like Adolph Hitler
and that kind of thinking failed in the 1940's
and it is going to fail now, you cannot treat
people in a civilized society as expendable
Yes, there may be an argument for a
vaccine programme that protects the greater
good but that does not mean that you can render
those who are damaged just consign them to the dustcart because
they are an inconvenience or they their mere presence
undermines public confidence, better to keep them hidden out the way
and there are too many of these children now, they won't be hidden away
and parents are getting very very angry, and they have every right to be angry
and the truth will come out
and it is going to be a very very painful truth when it does come out
and the tragedy is it's going to
damage public confidence in vaccine policy across-the-board
because people are going to say we don't believe you anymore
we don't trust you, you lied to us
and when that happens all vaccination policy is compromised, the whole
pillar of public health comes tumbling down
and a lot of trouble is going to ensue as you are
going to deal with a population who are not protected
from these infections and we are going to run into big problems
and that responsibility for that lays squarely at the door
of the public health figures and their commercial partners
who have allowed this to happen
Conflicts of Interest and Dishonesty?
There have been some slightly
difficult moments about differences of opinion, for
example with Richard Horton over conflicts of interests
and it's been interesting
the Lancet statement on conflict is: 'anything that would embarrass you
if it were later disclosed', and my involvement
with the Legal Aid Board didn't embarrass me at all
and it wasn't relevant, in my opinion, to disclose
it in the Lancet paper because they didn't fund any
of the Lancet paper
they funded a subsequent viralogical study, as was always intended
but it had been misrepresented
in the media that they had funded the Lancet study, and it wasn't disclosed
and this was the perception Richard Horton originally had
and when I was asked about this by him way back in 2004 I said, no
they didn't fund this study at all they funded a separate study
and he said 'well in that case it could be perceived as a potential conflict
of interest', and I said where did that come from?
The statement as I read it in the Lancet, the requirement is to 'disclose things that
might embarrass you if they emerge later and
it was interesting because within
that document which was self-contained anyone
writing a paper for the Lancet would just need to
read that and the actual statement is the test of conflict of interest in the Lancet
is an easy one anything that would embarrass you
and so you don't go beyond that, it is a self
contained document, why would you go any further
but there is a website flagged up in there where you can go that website
and there is a more broader
description of conflict of interest there which does include
potential or perceived conflicts of interest
which no one ever went to
Why would you do it? You have got it in front of you, Now there is a very big difference
Anything that would embarrass you is the active move
Okay, it is what would embarrass me, so I can think what
would embarrass me, and I can make a decision about that
what others might perceive to be a conflict of interest
is myriad it goes on forever
You have to put yourself in the third person
and think what might someone else with their various views and biases construe to
be a conflict of interest
and that is massive, where does that end?
So that is a huge conceptual leap
in terms as to what you would disclose
and there was no formal way for doing it at the time. Now you have a document where
you fill in the the the boxes saying no shares, no this, no that
that's very straightforward but in those days it wasn't
it was highly ambiguous and
it was always my intention, and always was disclosed
when there was a direct funding for a study, a grant
giving body, or in this case the Legal Aid Board
and so in the viral study it was disclosed
this study was supported in part by the Legal Aid Board and Dr Wakefield is acting
expert in the MMR litigation that is an easy one as it goes
but in the Lancet study I felt no need to disclose
it at all, and neither did any of my colleagues who
knew that I was involved with the Legal aid Board
on behalf of some of these children.
So that was a difficult moment but it was a difference of opinion
he thought I should have disclosed it, I felt
at the time that I didn't, now in retrospect
having
seen this new document about perceived conflict
I can see that it should have been disclosed
but there was no dishonesty, and he was good enough to say
there was no intent to deceive
when Dr Wakefield was asked about it he was
entirely open, he said yes there was this grant
We got into an argument and debate about
what was or wasn't a conflict of
interest, but there was absolutely no intent to deceive and the charge
is dishonesty
so he was extremely helpful in this as much he said, no
this was not dishonest this was a genuine difference of opinion
and so that then largely resolved
Where does it leave the GMC if you are not guilty?
That is a very good question on a very broad front because
they've got some tough decisions to make
One on the level of the case itself
and have they misinstructed their experts, are they going to have to retrench
in a different set of charges. They have to take time to
structure those charges and get a response from their experts
Are they going to be allowed to do that, I don't
know, must be becoming obvious to them now
that much of the original information they were given
have been misconstrued and
basing their charges on that information has been in error
at another level
they are under big pressure from the Department of Health
and David Salisbury in particular has been
calling them on a regular basis urging them to prosecute this
case more vigorously against me be nastier, be meaner
throw more in
and I know this because we get sent the unused material
and so I took the opportunity, he didn't know this, I mean you get all the
telephone conversations, all the conversation between people, all the
draft reports which is an interesting advantage to us
so I was able to write to David Salisbury and was able to say I am now in a position
to have read
the unused material from the GMC, and I note your entreaties to them about this case
he wrote he was furious, he contacted the GMC and said "I didn't know they
were going to get the unused material you never told me, this is a disgrace"
And the wonderful thing about that is that we get the
documents of that telephone conversation as well
So, you can see they are under a great deal of political pressure
to prosecute this case and it is interesting in the public domain Dr Salisbury
has said we don't want this to be seen as a
vendetta on behalf of the Department of Health.
So mixed messages one for the GMC one for the public
and then
The other dilemma they have is who do they represent in the end?
Because the GMC have
historically stood for the patient, the patients
rights, the patients welfare, the patients protection
from for example, medical malpractice.
Well, who do they stand for now because we stand
for the patients. Everything we have done is
in the best interests of the children
What they are representing and prosecuting is not on behalf of the children
no parent ahs complained agaisnt us, but on behalf of the Department of Health
on behalf of public health
on behalf of this new kid on the block, the greater good.
So here we have a body who has traditionally
represented the patient, the victim, if you like
against the medical profession or againts medical malpractice, now they're defending
the diktat of public health against the rights of the individual
so they're in a real quandary or if they're not they should be
about quite who they represent
because i know who i represent represent, the individual patient
Were you responsible for the children's Lumbarpuncture?
The charge of causing children to undergo lumbar puncture
is because of the position of an asterisk in the timetable
of the tests for the children and I undertook
because it was an increased
burden of work for the Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology. I undertook to just book
the tests for the MRI imaging of the brain and the electrical recordings of the brain
and the looks cool electrical recordings of the brain the EEG
so I would just
book it with the Department, I wasn't ordering the
tests, that was done by the clinicians, I was merely
functioning as a
clerk, if you like, just taking the form down, signing it and booking the appointment
nothing more than that the asterisk for an MRI on Monday
underneath the MRI also on a Monday is a lumbar
puncture, and therefore they have assumed that the
asterisk applies to the lumbar puncture as wel
and that I am causing that child to undergo a lumbar puncture.
So there is this whole string of charges
about me causing these children to undergo
lumbar puncture which was a clinically indicated
procedure advocated by the clinicians
only because the asterisk is in the same box
That is the basis of the charge or at least as far as we can see
The lumbar puncture was in fact due to continue directly after the
colonoscopy because the child was already sedated
for the colonoscopy so rather than give them two sedatives
for two different procedures
give them one and allow it to continue over so they
were sedated when they had the lumbar puncture
so there's no need to arrange it it was already going to be done
I did not cause the children to undergo lumbar puncture
But that is the
that is the, that is the 'forensic evidence' that they have for making a charge
uh... that doesn't stand up to much scrutiny
What Happened at the birthday party?
The Birhday Party
There are 2 mistakes about the birthday party.
One was taking blood from children at a birthday party
or having blood taken at a birthday party
and the other was telling the story about it in a way that was designed to
and tell people an audience of parents of children with autism
and professionals about my children's contribution to
these investigations. I was proud of them, but I also wanted to
temper that by illustrating the the mercenary nature of children
so the story itself was a gross exaggeration There were actually
7, 8, 9 children at the birthday party
who gave blood with fully informed consent
There was absolutely no problem, In the story that I tell, the children were fainting
and all that sort of thing It was a stupid story
Humour is in the moment. I thought it was funny at
the time, it wasn't funny then, it isn't funny now
but nonetheless there it was
the children were absolutely fine. Yes, I paid them 5 pounds each
or rewarded them 5 pounds each for their altruism, for their willingness to
participate in this It was done in a
perfectly respectable way, and there were no problems
and they were all entirely willing and
all their parents had given fully informed consent
children are often altruistic and will help out and my children who were
some of those children involved in that
knew the autistic children, they knew what it was all about.
These children came to stay with us
or have lunch with us when they had come up over from America. For example
and they were more than willing to help
My son Sam has just come back from teaching in an autism camp in Aspen Colorado
My children have a tremendous sense of
duty and caring, and they had no problem, or their friends at the time
about getting a sample of blood for this test
so it was a grossly exaggerated story
and that is a shame, but it should never have been told
in that setting, and you could reasonably argue it would
bring the reputation into disrepute, and that is what they have argued
the ethical
side of doing it, or at least the lack of ethics committee approval
there was no approval to do it
and nor did I think approval was necessary because it was done
away from the Royal Free, it was done off site it was done in a
domestic setting That was naive
and nowadays you would definitely need ethical
committee approval, and you probably did then
I didn't know about that and I wouldn't have told the story
obviously, if I had been aware that
t was a problem or had been a problem at the time
so a combination of naivety and a bad sense of humour
but there was no, absolutely, abuse of the children and they were all
very very happy
and would do it again any time, not that they did,
so it is just one of those things and ultimately
that's what they find me guilty of that is a small
charge in my mind compared to
the much graver charge of having conducted
dishonest and inappropriate research on children with autism
How would you say the media have handled the story?
I am dismayed by the
way in which the media continuously, despite whatever you tell them
reiterate the same errors, the same mistakes
but of course the major problem is with the way it was handled by
the Sunday Times and Brian Deer and and that to my mind was just
a big error from start to finish
it's like having five percent of the documents and making the story
out of those five percent
when you haven't got the remaining ninety five percent to that tell the actual story
making it up fixing that idea in mind, staying with that idea
irrespective of what anyone might say in mitigation and
that's what happens.
Why did it take so long for the charges to be brought against you?
I think that is really a question for the prosecuting counsel
i don't know and i suspect it may get to
quality of the charges themselves
the reliability of the charges. How do you construe a charge out of you caused this child
to have a lumbar puncture?
What does that mean you didn't do it you didn't order it
you didn't assess the child in advance to determine whether they needed it.
You were part of none of those things, yet you caused the child to have a lumbar puncture
Well, it is an interesting form of words I don't know
but i suspect they wanted to get as much together as they could
to throw everything in there
in the hope that something would stick
What do you think is the GMC's role in the hearing?
The General Medical Council has become an instrument of the public health apparatchik
for persecuting doctors discrediting doctors in an effort
to prevent them dissenting about vaccines and vaccine safety and
and who knows what will happen next to Richard Halvison
will he be the next?
This is extraordinary to Americans, absolutely extraordinary because in America you have
the first amendment you have freedom of speech
if you want to say something you say it in this country no way
The idea of
prosecuting a doctor because he has said something, given his opinion
offered his advice, said what he truly believes, it is absolute
anathema to Americans. They can't understand how this could
possibly happen in a civilised world, and yet here we have it
But I thought we were supposed to be living in a democracy
So did I we are so far from living in a democracy
this is a very very important case in so many ways.
I know that may sound very pompous to say that
actually
orthodox medicine is on trial here. We, my colleagues and I, practice orthodox medicine
based implicitly on the
history of the patient, the physical examination of the patient.
The correct clinical evaluation of the patient, making a diagnosis, treating
the disease within the patient,
That is what we do, and that is the kind of medicine
that should be practiced that is really being challenged by
when that comes into conflict with
with the beliefs, the diktat of public health
it is no longer someway permissible to do that
medicine is on trial and if we lose
and the position of the Department of Health is endorsed
then their ability to persecute doctors in this way is upheld
then what happens in the future?
What happens when there's a drug
related injury to a patient? What happens when
a new complication emerges from a treatment
or a vaccine? are going to say sorry thats's to bad
I'm not going to get involved
because you've got a big pharmaceutical industry there
with their friends in government, that are going
to come down on me and make my life a misery.
It happened with Thalidomide
and it has happened time and time again.
Every time a doctor puts his head up above the parapet
and said this vaccine or this drug is not safe
his world has been turned upside down
That is not a reason to walk away from it
in fact is every reason to fight it
because otherwise we just hand over, just give up
just hand over the world to the drug companies and walk away
Do you think that parents voices are being heard in the MMR story?
Is the story of the parents being heard in all of this either in the media or in the
GMC or anywhere?
Is it being listened to by doctors? No.
Is it being heard in the media?
Not to the extent that represents as to what is actually going on, no, and the reason is
these parents are dealing with a catastrophe, they
are dealing with a child who can't go out the house,
won't go out the house
screaming, having tantrums, beating their head against the wall
who has got terrible diarrhoea, it is 15 years old and in nappies
they don't have time to talk to the media, it is
just a select handful of parents who are actually
so determined
and with a particular mindset that they can do
that, the rest of them are just coping with
the catastrophe that's their world
Some think it is MMR, some don't think it is MMR
the problem is that
parents with children with autism are not being heard and
yet the numbers are growing through the roof
In AIDs it was a different story AIDS is a very interesting
analogy of an epidemic disease that has occurred in our lifetime and
AIDS started in the homosexual community in san francisco and los angeles
and and in the radical right wing politics of
Reagan and Thatcher it was it a Gay Plague it was an act of god anything but
a transmissible disease a virus
so what happened was with aids is that people were stigmatized
that is your problem like leprosy get away from me.
People went underground they continued their sexual
practices they didn't seek medical help the virus
it spread like wild fire and then ten years later when people of acknowledged the virus
it was to late to late
for thousands and thousands of people it's too late for three-quarters of sub-saharan
Africa it's to late
there was no imperative to produce vaccines or drugs or anything during that time
because it wasn't perceived to be our problem
then suddenly it appeared in blood
transfusion recipients and hemophiliacs and
heterosexuals and suddenly it was a major problem
and what happened was the aids activists went and threw infected blood on officials
and the cameras came out, this is great infected blood being thrown take a picture
suddenly politicians were embarrassed
a money started to flow and things changed so it was the
pressure on the politicians and the change in
perception that the media bought about because the activist did that
that really forced the pace of change
but these parents aren't like that
they're not aids activists these are just ordinary folk
trying to deal with a catastrophe in their lifetimes,
they are not people who go out and throw infected blood
maybe they should be they certainly getting angry enough
that something's going to happen something's going to break
and you just get a sense of it at the hearing
the beginning of the hearing
something has to changed because there's so many of these kids and so few resources
so little true care available for them
and you hear it again at this hearing, time and again his
is just a psychological problem, a psychiatric problem
behavioral problem
put them in a corner, sedate them, put them in a home, lock them up
No, it's not,
it is a medical problem, it is a medical disease, it is treatable,
it is understandable, you can investigate it, you can research it
and you can find out what is causing it if you want to
Nobody really wants to do that apart from a few of us
So AIDS is an interesting parallel, there was a tipping point in AIDS, it was around
the time people threw infected blood
How do you feel about the lack of support shown by fellow doctors generally?
I get Letters from GPs and psychiatrists, and others
saying this is what happened to this child
and we are right with you . Where are you? I don't see you but thats okay
I don't feel any antipathy towards them It is just human nature
Maybe they are not sufficiently persuaded to come all the way out
maybe
many of the doctors I deal with are parents of
affected children themselves. They know what happened
sometimes they are still frightened to say
That I find a little difficlult to swallow
Their own children have been damaged and yet they still keep quiet about it