The
disgraced doctor who published a study more
than 10 years ago claiming that a common
childhood vaccine -- the measles-mumps-rubella
inoculation -- causes autism may have been
motivated more by money than conviction,
investigators say.
According to the second in a three-part
investigative series in the medical journal BMJ, Dr.
Andrew Wakefield was retained by a lawyer
seeking to extract money from vaccine
manufacturers as his research was just
beginning. He also allegedly applied for a patent
for an alternative vaccine, set up a business to
profit from that vaccine as well as diagnostic kits
and other products, and worked with the Royal
Free Medical School in London on these business
ventures.
"It's horrible that institutions may have been
involved and that this [may have been] a planned
action," said Keith A. Young, vice chair for
research in the department of psychiatry and
behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science
Center College of Medicine and core leader for
neuroimaging and genetics at the Center of
Excellence for Research on Returning War
Veterans in Temple. "It looks like it was aimed
pretty much at making money."
The first part of the investigation, published last
week in the journal, accused Wakefield of
forming his hypothesis before he even began to
collect data, then doctoring that data to suit his
theory and even stating that children in the trial
had the regressive form of autism when, in fact,
most did not.
That allegedly fraudulent research was published
in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet in
1998. The findings generated a huge response,
particularly among concerned parents, many of
whom then refused to vaccinate their children.
In February 2010, The Lancet issued a formal
retraction of Wakefield's research, which is
"unusual," according to Dr. Paul Offit, chief of
infectious diseases and director of the Vaccine
Education Center at Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia.
"A lot of bad science gets published that's never
retracted," Offit said. He also noted that, "as a
general rule, a study should have more subjects
than authors; this [1998] paper had 12 participants
and 13 authors."
Last May, Britain's General Medical Council barred
Wakefield from practicing in the United Kingdom.
"The MMR [measles-mumps-rubella vaccine]
scare was based not on bad science but on a
deliberate fraud," Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief
of the BMJ, said in a prepared statement. "Such
clear evidence of falsification of data should now
close the door on this damaging vaccine scare."
However, that may be easier said than done,
since public perception on the issue appears to
have been permanently altered.
"It's now become fixed in the mind of people that
there's the potential for a relationship between
vaccines and autism, despite the fact that there
are no real signs to support it," said Dr. Max
Wiznitzer, a child neurologist with Rainbow
Babies & Children's Hospital, University Hospital's
Case Medical Center in Cleveland. "This paper and
[Wakefield's] work has contributed to the
development of a distrust of vaccines. As a
consequence, [we've had] unnecessary illnesses
and infections and unnecessary deaths."
Research monies have also been diverted "to
disprove the unproven," Wiznitzer added.
"[Those monies] could have been used
elsewhere."
The new BMJ report, researched and written by
U.K. investigative journalist Brian Deer, alleges
that the lawyer who originally retained Wakefield
was himself hired by an anti-vaccine organization
called JABS.
It also says that the research ultimately published
in The Lancet was funded by the UK Legal Aid
Board, although this wasn't disclosed until years
later.
Soon after the study's publication in The Lancet,
Wakefield consulted with employees of Royal
Free Medical School about forming a company to
develop products based on his research. That
company was incorporated and also received
funding from the U.K. Legal Aid Board to initiate
trials in children, the BMJ article alleges.
Royal Free Hospital and University College London
(UCL), which is also implicated in the BMJ
investigation, merged in 1998.
A statement issued by University College London
in response to the first BMJ article said the
institution "takes any allegation of research
misconduct very seriously, and we will certainly
investigate those raised in the BMJ. At this point,
however, we have not been given the
opportunity to view all of the articles to be
published in the BMJ relating to this issue. We are
therefore currently able to give only a general
institutional response to the issues so far raised."
The statement went on to note that at the time
the Lancet research was conducted, Royal Free
Hospital was not part of UCL.
"We fully acknowledge the need to look closely at
the research of someone alleged [in the BMJ
article] to have carried out research misconduct,"
read the statement. "We are determined to learn
from the mistakes made in relation to this case."
With regard to this second article, UCL said: "We
have only just seen this so all we can say at this
point is we're looking carefully at the allegations
raised."
As for Wakefield, his Web site shows him as
currently living in Austin, Texas, promoting a
book published last year, Callous Disregard:
Autism and Vaccines, The Truth Behind the
Tragedy, and going on speaking engagements.
Speaking last week to CNN, Wakefield called
investigative journalist Deer "a hit man -- he has
been brought in to take me down, because they
[pharmaceutical industry] are very, very
concerned about the adverse reactions to the
vaccines that are occurring in children."
For his part, Deer -- who says he was paid for his
work by the BMJ -- scoffed at Wakefield's claim,
telling CNN that the accusations of fraud come
from not from him, but from "the editors of the
BMJ, a very prestigious medical journal."
Source: Http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/648755.html
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