Autism doc (yes, that one) banned in UK
| 24 May, 2010 | Adie Chan |
36
|
|
The UK has prohibited Andrew Wakefield from practicing medicine — you’ll remember him as the first to publish a peer-reviewed report linking autism to the MMR vaccine, in The Lancet in 1998 (which has since been retracted). Additional research has failed to find a connection between autism and any vaccine.
According to the Associated Press, since this paper, UK vaccination rates have not returned to their former levels, and each year brings outbreaks of measles.
The UK’s General Medical Council found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct, based on how he carried out his research. He has set up a practice in the U.S., and can appeal the ruling.
What’s your reaction to this latest news?
Alison McCook, Deputy Editor, The Scientist
|
|
previous post
This decision is wrong. As far as am aware, Dr Wakefield published his initial article in good faith, and in a peer-reviewed journal. Regardless of what was later discovered, he should not lose his licence to practice – nothing he has done shows that he is a danger to patients in any way whatsoever on an individual level (or any other level, really).
It looks as if he is being punished for challenging the prevailing view, which cannot be good. It can only lead to doctors being reluctant to report, and publicise if necessary, problems with medications/treatments. I hope that Dr Wakefield mounts a claim for judicial review of his treatment by the GMC, as this decision just seems like pettiness.
He outright lied for financial and professional gain. How is that “in good faith”? He endangered children to conduct the research…so yes, he’s a danger to patients. Get a little more information about something before you comment on it.
You must be Dr Prick and well rounded as judge, jury and executioner. This is not the first time medical professionals and scientists have come up against goliath moneybags with independent review and have lost tenure, employment, and credibility due to media and the powers that keep them in business.
Nor is it the first time, alas, that unscrupulous medics / scientists have managed to get rich on the back of fake data; and that’s before one considers the potential health risks…
Susan, if personal insults and regurgitating asinine stereotypes is all you can come up with, I suggest you go back to your sand-box and leave the real discussion to the grown-ups.
I’m all for informed debate and even ill-informed opinion in this salon. I have to approve first time commenters, and I’ll do that no matter what I think of what they’re saying.
However, I will delete personal abuse, and I will ban persistently offensive commenters. I know we don’t have a Comments Policy yet, but we’re working on it
Apologies to any sensitive types here. The fact of the matter, there is no science/public consortium. The recalls are many, the lawsuits reeling, and the testing in the hands of corporations holding CBI (confidential business information) in patents. Doesn’t that bother you Mark. I did not immunize, I birthed at home 3x, I don’t eat science mutations, however I did work in media for too long. Must be where I picked up those asinine stereotype regurgitations.
Quoting from the story in New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/24/world/AP-EU-Britain-Autism-Doctor.html?_r=1&ref=world):
“The council was acting on a finding in January that Wakefield and two other doctors showed a ”callous disregard” for the children in their study, published in 1998 in the medical journal Lancet. The medical body said Wakefield took blood samples from children at his son’s birthday party, paying them 5 pounds (about $7.20) each and later joked about the incident.” and
“The council’s investigation focused on how Wakefield and colleagues carried out
their research, not on the science behind it.”
It is therefore absolutely clear that the reason for the ban was his alleged unethical activities as a physician. The committee did not consider the merits or otherwise of his research publications.
This doctor should be commended for speaking the truth. There are deep pockets behind the status quo. Just because a certain position is”conventional” does not mean that it should remain the official position even when more evidence is revealed to the contrary. This is the U.K.’s loss. I had previously believed that medicine practiced abroad was more advanced than what is offered in the U.S. This is an example where the U.K. has fallen behind.
There were deep pockets behind Wakefield’s “research” too! I do wish people would stop feeling sorry for this idiot. He fabricated the data. He took blood samples from children without appropriate consent. He successfully spearheaded a campaign to shake confidence in the combined MMR vaccine and have it replaced with single-virus vaccinations – just like the one he patented…! I’ll sleep soundly in my bed knowing that Wakefield will never have anything to do with the care of my children.
While I recognize the widespread damage caused by this man’s findings, I think it is unethical to bar a doctor from practicing medicine because his research was flawed. Many current medical beliefs are based upon research findings that will certainly be overturned in the next few decades. If, however, he still stands behind his false conclusions in practice and recommends against MMR vaccine to his patients, that is another matter entirely. In the latter case, he should be barred from medicine because of improper _medical_ practice, and not because he is a poor scientist.
He unethically obtained samples from children and put them through procedures without consent or need…how is that just being a bad scientist? That’s being an awfully unethical doctor!
The facts of the case as related by Dr Aust at http://draust.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/denouement-for-the-mmr-scare/ are worth reviewing.
If you take into account that he appears to have been asked to cook up these data, that he patented a single measles jab, that children underwent unnecessary and unethical procedures as a result of his ‘research’, not to mention the children who have been sick because they didn’t receive a vaccine, then being struck off seems incredibly mild.
This is precisely why they will never find a cure for cancer. They should be encouraging doctors who go the extra mile not having them struck off.
Richard P. Grant is a molecular cell biochemist pretending to be a structural biologist. He writes fiction under the pseudonym
I believe that responsibility for a flawed research should be taken by peer reviewed journals that published such research. Otherwise how would such journals be different from any dodgy paper?
I think there is nothing wrong with having measles in childhood. Fatality rate in developed countries is 0.3%. Children whose immune system has been doing its job through childhood illnesses are better off later in life when they would need good immune system to prevent cancer.
Immunological disorders are on the rise and there has been no research that would establish no link between vaccinations and neurological or immunological disorders later in life.
From the World Health Organisation website :
# Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available.
# In 2008, there were 164 000 measles deaths globally
Since “According to the Associated Press, since this paper, UK vaccination rates have not returned to their former levels, and each year brings outbreaks of measles,” why not reveal the investigation to see if the incidence of autism is reduced since that key paper? This, I believe, can prove his innocence.
In Japan, they replaced MMR with single jabs, and guess what?
Autism kept rising.
I’m not sure whos more in the wrong here, proffessional misconduct seems a little harsh. ok the guy doesnt understand statistics but he’s not alone, if anything this case highlights the lack of understanding the medical community has of applied statistics, something that should undoubtedly be addressed. You also have to ask the question…who reviewed the paper? surley the reviewers, and journal editor are just as much at fault.
Dr Wakefield published his initial article in good faith after noticing, and associating problems with children, who would become autistic.
Of course, he was wrong in his assumption that the MMR vaccine in itself creates autism. However, this does not mean that vaccination is not involved with the growing autism problem. I believe that the primary problem not studied, is the accelerated growth created in children, with greatly reduced exposure to childhood infections, and how such lack of infection descales natural laws dealing with the interrelationship between brain growth and development and growth and development of the somatic body.
Maybe the real problem is not using vaccination to prevent childhood infectious disease, but the complete opposite, of lack of experience with childhood infectious disease, and uncoupling of natural processes involving development of the immune system, and growth and development of the brain and physical body.
It’s about time. His license should’ve been revoked years ago. He endangered children for the study and continues to do so to this day. Every year almost 200,000 children die from measles and he told parents to boycott the only thing that can protect them, the MMR vaccine. Why? Because he had something to gain. Meanwhile millions of dollars have been spent on a wild goose chase for autism-vaccine links that could’ve spent actually learning something to help people.
It’s absolutely shameful what that man has done in the name of medicine and science.
Until one hears “the facts of the case” from Dr. Wakefield then it is no better than a kangaroo court. Lots of good scientists have been dragged through the mud by vested interests, including famously, Arpad Putzai.
To hear Wakefield speak for himself:
“Why Medical Authorities Went to Such Extremes to Silence Dr. Andrew Wakefield ”
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield-interview.aspx
Andrew Wakefield has not been struck off because of the MMR trouble. To quote the report in the Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1c633392-6795-11df-a932-00144feab49a.html
“The panel concluded earlier this year that he had conducted unnecessary medical investigations on children without ethical approval or appropriate qualifications. It said he had acted dishonestly in accepting funds allocated by the Legal Aid Board for research concerning alleged vaccine-induced harm, when his research was paid for by the NHS [National Health Service].
He gave one child an experimental product called Transfer Factor, designed as an alternative measles vaccine developed by a company of which he was to be research director and a shareholder, without noting its administration or dose on the medical notes or informing the child’s doctor.
It said he had abused his position of trust as a medical practitioner in taking blood samples from children at his son’s birthday party, paying them
Actually, each of those points relate DIRECTLY to the MMR study…
To publish in a peer reviewed journal implies that your data analysis, as far as can be judged by the reviewers, is sound. The biggest problem with association studies is the bias in data selection, that is not presented in the paper, since the bias itself is sufficient to show significant correlations. It is up to the author, to present the data as it is performed, this part cannot be checked by the peers. The peers can only review what is written down, not what is perform.
Selecting patients with a bias without telling so in the paper, is the worse thing one could do in a peer-review correlation study, next to plain forgery.
The action leading to the prohibition to practice medicine is that he took patients from lawsuits (obviously selected on having autism and being vaccinate) and wrote as if they were random patients. This seriously undermines the credibility of this research, and since it is the pioneer in the field, all research in this field. Scientists will be extremely skeptic to any conclusion linking autism to vaccination. It is like the early transplantation studies, in which a researcher painted white skin black, in order to suggest successful skin transplantation.
With regards to the ban, of course one could argue that this should lead to a ban on publishing in scientific literature over a ban on medical practice, since the first seems to be more appropriate considering the misconduct.
I’m not entirely sure what my bio has to do with it.
‘Going the extra mile’? That sounds a bit hollow when you look at the misconduct and involvement of half a million quid.
I came across this cartoon yesterday, which explains the Wakefield case in easy to understand language. It’s worth a read.
The General Medical Council (GMC) has published the details of its decision on its website: http://www.gmc-uk.org/news/7115.asp
These are worth reviewing. In reaching their determination of serious professional misconduct,
the GMC looked at how research was conducted and whether Ethics Committees were consulted appropriately.
A sample extract: “This action was contrary to his representation to the Ethics Committee that all the procedures were clinically indicated. In nine of the eleven children (2,1, 3, 4, 9, 5,12, 8 and 7) the Panel has found that Dr Wakefield acted contrary to the clinical interests of each child. The Panel is profoundly concerned that Dr Wakefield repeatedly breached fundamental principles of research medicine. It concluded that his actions in this area alone were sufficient to amount to serious professional misconduct.”
This is about so much more than just the Lancet article.
I am amazed to see people still playing the
Consider it what you like. You say:
“Of course, getting proven wrong is an occupational hazard for scientists. However, provided that (i) you can admit it; and (ii) you didn
I think you’ll find that putting children at risk of contracting a fatal disease because some greedy s-o-b falsifies data to help line his own pocket represents “epic fail”…
I had measles and mumps as a child, most children my age did. But when it comes to genetically mutated agriculture it isn’t “EPIC” it’s “epidemic “where the science body and government are complicit in lax regulatory processes. I just don’t get the hanging of one when thousands are holding a noose.
Oh, don’t get me wrong – “Big Pharma” has a lot to answer for. I just don’t think that anger and mistrust towards the powers-that-be is reason to support Wakefield. He has been struck off not just over any “challenges to the dogma” he may have (erroneously) made, but because of his lies, avarice and use of inappropriate & unethical work practices (clearly forgetting that “above all, do no harm” bit in the Hyppocratic Oath).
Suppose I found a correlation between marijuana use in mothers and autism in offspring. If there is an environmental contaminant causative agent, any agent from any source, such a correlation might appear!! Suppose further I point out that since research in animals in the 1970’s showed a change in neural pathways connecting the frontal cortex to the cerebellum in heavy pot users, said pathways might be damaged in these children (probably but to what result?). Suppose further I point out that THC stays in the body for months or years after marijuana use such that young mothers might not be able to easily protect their children from this problem. Next, party B living in a different location gets a different result, no correlation. And suppose my funding came from (insert any state or private source here). Then it is obvious that….. (insert almost endless controversy here). In short, hypothesis and anecdotal correlation are not proof. Actual proof requires, generally, testing the hypothesis in multiple ways and with multiple approaches. In babies with tumors in the suspected pathways, did removal of those tumors lead to autism? Are double blind studies able to reproduce the damage and result? Can you build or enlarge those pathways to relieve autism? To me this looks like yet another witch hunt, a vindictive tempest in a teapot. Can someone out there fill in those little niggly fact things that would allow a rational discussion??
I would really like to share my insight. I had measles as a child. But after my transplant for thalassaemia I was suppose to take all vaccines again. At that time I was especially concerned about polio and hepatitis. While recovering I would read a lot about about post transplant management and the works. It was at that time that I stumbled upon this association. I still have to take the MMR, having already taken the others. While I have no concerns now, I really was scared of taking it back then.
Essentially, I feel the psychological impact of this association was intense. So while I am neutral on his license being taken away, I am certainly shocked if whatever being said about his unethical practices is true.
Susan, a couple of questions.
Why are you more inclined to attach credence to the one small study by Wakefield, than to all the larger studies published by others? You are clearly not alone in this regard, and I was hoping you could shed some light.
You are clearly correct to worry about the possibility of corrupting influences on mainstream researchers who are beholden or associated with special interests. Why is it harder for you to consider the possibility that Wakefield was corrupted by the same kind of influences? Does being a maverick make one immune? Does a presumption of widespread corruption in medical research make it inappropriate to punish specific documented cases?
What is your response to the claims, summarized in the above comments, that Wakefield’s methodology violated accepted ethical standards for research and patient treatment? I would be interested in your thoughts.
P.S. A word of advice from Polemics 101: stick to the subject. When you drag in extraneous issues like GE food, you increase the likelihood of being dismissed as a crank.