Many lessons can be learned from Andrew Wakefield’s poorly designed and fraudulent study investigating a proposed link between the measles virus and Crohn’s (or, is it “… enterocolitis”?) disease, and later, autism. Of the more relevant, who’s funding the research and what are their motives? Not to say that someone should have known Wakefield was being funded by a lawyer who represented JABS, a anti-vac group; he was wise to keep that secret to anyone who would lift a finger. In Brian Deer’s investigative report, it reads clearly that nearly every motive and decision Wakefield made in and around the study (and its accompanying business ventures) was to infect the country with JABSviridae and let its toxin fund his enterprises.
Any good scientist will observe phenomena and make hypotheses, though it’s a stretch to make business models after them. Andrew Wakefield wanted a particular outcome, a link between MMR vaccination and “autism enterocolitis”, so he could provide diagnostic methods, a new single measles shot, and possibly treatment for autism. Perhaps, he really felt there was a link and just sought to make a living off of it, too. But, the fact that he had the lawyer, Richard Barr, seek out children with the proper “signs”, which rules out random selection, and that, the study only included 12 participants, leads me to believe he cared more for his business endeavors.
It’s also curious as to why The Lancet even published the paper. The study was poorly designed, the paper has no concrete conclusions, especially as pertains to the link with autism, and even if they had made some discoveries, it’d be hard to trust the data with so few participants. Eventually, a new head of medicine arrive at the Royal Free Hospital, Mark Pepys, who pushed him to do the study again but properly. Wakefield’s neglect and non-compliance to the push lost him the research position.
Interestingly, a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in 1997, before Wakefield’s paper, investigated the safety of multiple different vaccines, MMR, MMRV, and VARIVAX. A total of 812 children were used in the study. Each was given a variation of the aforementioned vaccines and some a placebo. The only undesirable reaction shown were minor rashes, fevers, and sometimes mild cases of chicken-pox. This fact only makes it more confusing why The Lancet and the public believed the outrageous claims made by Andrew Wakefield.
BillyBiome 