It's been called "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". On 28 February 1998 a research paper primarily written by physician Andrew Wakefield, was published in The Lancet. It suggested there was a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and autism.
As the Wikipedia article on the affair explains, that paper was later found to be fraudulent:
The fraud involved data bias and manipulation, and two undisclosed conflicts of interest. It was exposed in a lengthy Sunday Times investigation by reporter Brian Deer, resulting in the paper's retraction in February 2010 and Wakefield's being discredited and struck off the UK medical register three months later.
In the paper, Wakefield fabricated evidence to suggest a new "syndrome" existed, which he called "autistic enterocolitis". Wakefield had been employed by a lawyer representing parents in lawsuits against vaccine producers, and had reportedly earned up to US$43 million per year selling diagnostic kits for the non-existent syndrome he claimed to have discovered. He also held a patent to a rival measles vaccine at the time.
What's now largely forgotten is that Wakefield was for a time a hero of... well, the sort of people who are now members of Bluesky.
Private Eye took up the idea of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and pursued it long after most of Wakefield's supporters (including most co-authors of Lancet study) had walked away.
Eventually, the Eye's editor asked his own medical correspondent to conduct what he optimistically termed a "peer review" of its coverage of the affair. You can read it online.
Stephen Brook, writing in the Guardian, was not impressed:
For a magazine that often accuses newspapers of "burying" corrections, the boot seems on the other foot this week as we have to wait until page 29 and after eight other articles from its In The Back section to get the Eye's take on the Wakefield verdict.
An editor, particularly of what is partially an investigative publication, has to be prepared to follow hunches and go against the consensus sometimes, but you hope their hunches will be good ones and that they change course when it becomes obvious they've backed the wrong horse.
But it wasn't just Private Eye that backed Wakefield: a television film was made for Channel 5 with him as the hero. Titled Hear the Silence it starred Juliet Stevenson as the mother of an autistic child and Hugh Bonneville as Wakefield. (You can find it online, but I didn't tell you that.)
Though some praised the acting and the drama, there was much adverse criticism:
Jon Joseph in The Times wrote "there are definitely no shades of grey" with Wakefield's assertions treated as if they are "a law of nature, like gravity".
Of the supposed plot presumed to originate with the drug companies as a means to discredit Wakefield, Ben Goldacre wrote in The Guardian of its utter implausibility as the patent on the MMR vaccine had lapsed, it was now generic and no longer highly profitable.
I've written this, not to heap blame on anyone, but to recapture a surprising and largely forgotten aspect of the affair.
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