An interesting read over at Kevin Leitch’s site on the fate of Wakefield’s MMR-autism theory.
Nick Chadwick, who worked with Andrew Wakefield, was under cross examination in a very important legal case in the US. Remembering that Andrew Wakefield required positive tests for measles virus, read the following:
QYou state in the affidavit that during your time on your Ph.D. research in Dr. Wakefield’s lab you only obtained nine positive PCR results for measles. Every time you did that you sequenced them?
A That’s correct, yes. We sent it off to a sequencing lab to be sequenced, and the data that came back showed that they were all false positive results.
Q Every positive result you got was a false positive?
A Yes. Yes, apart from the case of the positive control samples which we had, which were a measles infection, a brain disease. We were able to detect measles virus in those cases, so I was confident that the methods were working fine.
Q Towards the end of your affidavit you state that you had reservations about the immunohistochemistry done to detect measles virus, specifically the use of an antibody from Porton Down?
A Yes, that’s right. The antibody seemed to cross-react. Experiments we did in the lab seemed to show that the antibody cross-reacted with bacterial proteins, which I think is an artifact of how the antibody was made, and that led us or led me to think that it may have been cross-reacting with bacteria in the gut of patients rather than measles virus.
Q Now, that would lead to contamination?
A Well, it would lead to a false positive result. Say for instance if the antibody was binding to something in the guts of these patients, it may well have been a bacteria rather than the measles virus.
Q Okay. Producing the false positives in those?
A Yes, that’s correct.
Q You also state in your affidavit that you believe Dr. Wakefield was aware of all of your negative results when he submitted his paper, “Ileal Lymphonodular Hyperplasia, Nonspecific Colitis and Pervasive Developmental Disorder,” which was published in 1998 to the Lancet.
A Yes, that’s correct.
The paper being referred to is Wakefield’s notorious paper which led to the MMR vaccine-autism controversy, following a press conference at which Wakefield called for MMR vaccine’s withdrawal. Epidemiological evidence has never found such a link and virological studies have refuted the measles virus hypothesis.
So Wakefield was being paid by lawyers attempting to prove MMR vaccine was unsafe, and now we have an allegation that even the positive results he found were false positives – and that these concerns had been passed on to him prior to publication of his paper.
Dr Andrew Wakefield is due to appear in front of the General Medical Council on charges of serious professional misconduct on 16 July.
5 Comments
Bring it on.
Now that Wakefield seems to be getting his comeuppance, II wonder what are the chances of bringing a few of those scaremongering journalists before some professional tribunal?
I’m awaiting Melanie Philips’ next MMR article with baited breath.
I will be waiting for Dr Andrew Wakefield reply for these question.
Dr Chadwick has reported this state of play for some time: Brian Deer has an account of it, along with some valuable information from his laboratory notebooks.
Brian Deer’s summary of the whole sorry affair.
This would just be unpleasant and a touch sordid if certain high-profile nutritionists and similar were not founding their treatment programmes for autism on Wakefield’s work and if they were not advising people in such a way as to convince them not to vaccinate their children (but consider homeopathic vaccinations instead).
Petition signatory 4797 credits Patrick Holford with her daughter’s decision not to vaccinate her children:
“Thank God my daughter used her judgement and did not have the MMR for her children. She based her decision on extensive research, most particularly ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You’ and Patrick Holford.”
The science and general sheningans surrounding this led a lawyer for the US Govt. Health and Human Services Dept. to make this remarkable comment in his concluding statements for the first part of the Autism Omnibus hearings in the US. The MMR-autism case has no plausible or verifiable science to support it.
“It’s at best speculation, idle speculation. Now, at worst–at worst–it’s a contrivance. It’s a contrivance that’s been developed and articulated and promoted by its chief proponent, and that’s Andrew Wakefield. He promoted it for financial gain. Either way it’s not science.
pgs 28-9: Day 12 Transcript of Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services (pdf)
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