Big
story of Crohn's disease: how attack on
broadcasters revealed baseless claims
This page is
material generated during a libel lawsuit
brought, and withdrawn, by Dr Andrew Wakefield, against Channel 4
Television Corporation, Twenty Twenty Productions
Ltd and Brian Deer, arising from Deer's 2004
programme MMR: What they didn't tell
you
Below is a
commentary drafted by Brian Deer in 2006 for
Channel 4's lawyers, concerning a complaint
lodged in 1996 on behalf of Andrew Wakefield,
"the claimant",
against an earlier programme by Twenty Twenty,
"the second
defendant", which investigated the
former gut surgeon's [abandoned] claim that
vaccines against measles caused the inflammatory
bowel disorder Crohn's disease. The material in maroon is from Wakefield's reply
to a defence of justification filed in the case Andrew Wakefield v Channel
4 & Ors
"3.2. Further, the
Second Defendant made a television programme
in 1996 titled “The
Big Story” which
was broadcast by Carlton Television. The
Claimant agreed to participate in this
programme, although ultimately he was
extremely disappointed when it misrepresented
him and his work on broadcast. The Claimant
subsequently came to understand that the
programme had been edited deliberately so as
to attack him. This led to a complaint to the
Broadcasting Standards Commission about
unjust and unfair treatment of the Claimant
and another participant in the programme,
Professor Anders Ekbom. The BSC upheld the
complaint in part, in particular in relation
to the editing of answers given by Professor
Ekbom in interview which had the effect of
making them appear detrimental to the
Claimant and his work. As well as having its
production company (i.e. the current Second
Defendant) in common with “The
Big Story”, the Dispatches
programme now under
complaint shared the same executive producer,
Ms Claudia Milne."
A
programme maker’s past experience in any
field of inquiry is not - as the claimant implies
at 3.2 - a disqualification to further work in
that field. On the contrary: the public interest
would be poorly served if programme makers and
journalists restricted themselves to subjects of
which they had no experience.
The
second defendant, Twenty Twenty Productions,
produced a 30-minute ITV-1 “Big Story”
series programme, titled “A Difficult
Decision”, broadcast on October 3 1996.
Unknown to the producers, this was only a month
after William Kessick’s in-patient admission
to the Royal Free, as the first in the
claimant’s cohort of children, recruited
through Ms Fletcher, Mr Barr and Ms Kessick, and
published in The Lancet in February 1998.
The
programme was introduced by its presenter in the
following terms:
“Tonight we
investigate claims that a new campaign to
vaccinate more than a million children
against measles could lead many to develop an
incurable disease.”
The
programme ventilated the claimant’s claim
that measles vaccine was the cause of
Crohn’s disease. The producers’
decision to produce a programme on this topic
followed extensive newspaper coverage of this
alarming claim, and the broadcast was timed to
coincide with a Department of Health campaign to
revaccinate children with a second dose of MMR.
The claimant was featured in the programme,
stating, among other things (with reference to
the government’s November 1994 MR
revaccination campaign):
“I’m very
concerned. We have seen a very large number
of cases of Crohn’s disease in children
presenting since the ’94 campaign, and
my anxiety is if we start re-exposing
4-year-olds to measles vaccine without any
follow-up, without any indication of how safe
that’s going to be, then we as
gastroenterologists are going to see a
greater increase in the number of these
children presenting with this extremely
unpleasant disease.”
“The longest trial
of measles vaccine safety set up
prospectively in this country or the States,
for example, is three weeks. And three weeks
is wholly inadequate. Wholly inadequate for a
live, potentially hazardous biological agent
about which nothing is known.”
The
programme also featured Ms Fletcher of Jabs, who
was then launching a campaign against the
government’s 1996 vaccination plans, and who
was shown stuffing envelopes. She stated that she
blamed MMR for the problems of her neurologically
disordered son Robert (who is not autistic). Ms
Fletcher commented:
“Dr Wakefield
produced a major report linking the measles
vaccine categorically with inflammatory bowel
disease. The Department of Health saw fit to
poo-poo that, instead of investigating
it.”
Other
featured parents blaming measles vaccines
included Ms Kessick, Ms Susan Hamlyn, and Ms Ruth
Tilley.
The
programme’s producers were impressed by the
parents’ anecdotal evidence, and had
originally anticipated that “A Difficult
Decision” would sound a clear warning note
about the unknown risks of measles vaccination,
which the claimant, Ms Fletcher and the others
were criticising. However, in the course of
routine research, the second defendant’s
production staff were unable to find any
specialist in the UK who would endorse the
claimant’s allegation that measles vaccine
was the cause of Crohn’s disease. On the
contrary, the response encountered among
specialists was (entirely unexpectedly, given the
newspaper coverage) critical of the
claimant’s opinions. In this light, the
programme makers were under a clear obligation to
adopt a balanced “for-and-against”
tone, in which the claimant’s frightening
allegations were both advanced and questioned.
Although
the claimant was at the time only a senior
lecturer at a north London medical school, he
evidently believed himself to be of such stature
and accomplishment that the second defendant
should have accorded him an uncritical
thirty-minute infomercial for his highly
contentious and poorly substantiated claim that
measles vaccine caused Crohn’s disease (and
on which, unknown to the programme-makers, he had
filed patent applications, including for his own
vaccine). After the broadcast, he instructed Mr
Robert Sawyer, a property developer who was at
the time his publicist, and who now operates the
registered charity Visceral on the
claimant’s behalf, to make a complaint to
the Broadcasting Standards Commission (whose
responsibilities are now absorbed into Ofcom).
After
a hearing, the BSC said in an adjudication dated
September 17 1997:
“The Commission
considers this edition of The Big Story to
have been a responsible investigation into a
matter of considerable public interest at a
time when the Government’s programme of
mass vaccinations against measles was being
extensively publicised by its supporters and
criticised by its opponents.”
With
regard to a complaint made by Mr Sawyer on behalf
of the Swedish doctor, Prof Ekbom (who, the BSC
recorded, did not, in fact, endorse the
claimant’s theory), the BCC acknowledged in
its adjudication “the difficulties the
programme-makers faced in editing an interview
with a Swedish expert who was discussing
technical and often complex points in a language
foreign to him”. The producers confirmed
that part of a sentence which was
incomprehensible had been edited out, and that,
in retrospect, it would have been better to
interview him in Swedish, with his contribution
subtitled. However, the adjudication said that
the programme-makers failed to make clear that
the doctor “did hold the view that on
balance there was likely to be a connection
between the measles virus and Crohn’s
disease, and that measles was a ‘suspect
agent’ in the development of
Crohn’s.” This criticism in the
adjudication related to the doctor’s views
about measles virus, not vaccine,
and was therefore tangential to the
programme’s main issue. But the BSC said
with regard to this aspect of the representation
of Prof Ekbom (who the second defendant did not
think played much part in making the complaint):
“In this one respect the Commission finds
unfairness”.
With
regard to the claimant, the BSC considered his
allegations in detail, and rejected them. The
adjudication stated:
“Therefore the
Commission does not find any significant
unfairness to Dr Wakefield.”
Thus,
not only was the second defendant’s
reportage of the claimant fair, it was found to
be fair by the BSC, which was a tribunal worthy
of a court’s respect.
Given
the seriousness with which the claimant took his
claim that measles vaccine caused Crohn’s
disease, the defendants in this litigation have
been surprised to see that he subsequently
abandoned this allegation, notwithstanding it
being his central charge in “A Difficult
Decision”. At paragraph 2.56 of his reply,
for instance, he states:
"... monovalent
measles vaccine is at least as effective as
the measles component of MMR in vaccinating
against measles, and comes with the advantage
over MMR of well established safety."
Similarly,
the defendants were surprised upon reading the
transcript of the Medical Research Council
meeting of March 1998 - held not 18 months after
“A Difficult Decision” was broadcast,
and only six months after the BSC adjudication -
at which, the transcript shows, both the claimant
and Dr Montgomery (who co-authored the falsified
“Through a Glass Darkly” review)
admitted that they had abandoned their
measles-vaccine-causes-Crohn’s theory in the
light of evidence to the contrary. This contrary
evidence included that from the BCS70 survey
[considered in detail in the commentary under
2.36.3 of the reply], which found no
association between measles vaccination and
Crohn’s disease.
At
page 59 of the transcript, Dr Montgomery is
reported saying:
“Our work and other
people’s work does not support that
monovalent measles vaccination at a typical
age is a risk.”
At
page 63:
DR MONTGOMERY:
[Regarding his research with the claimant] It
does not suggest that monovalent vaccination
is a risk, from the evidence we have so far.
PROFESSOR TOMKINS: So
you withdraw that hypothesis?
DR MONTGOMERY: As I say,
the evidence that is there does not support
that as far as I can see.
At
page 64, the claimant himself chimes in, with
regard to Crohn’s disease:
“If we were born
all-knowing we would not be sitting round
this table at the moment. Clearly hypotheses
evolve... When we looked at the second
cohort, the BCS70, the monovalent vaccine
appears to be, if anything, slightly
protective.”
Evidently,
despite giving the claimant a substantial, fair,
opportunity to ventilate his speculations, the
second defendant was right to avoid presenting
the public with a wholly credulous account in
“A Difficult Decision”. Moreover, with
the benefit of hindsight, the second defendant
now recognises that, during the production of the
1996 programme, it had not been told the whole
story. The producers had no idea, for instance,
that nine months before the broadcast, the
claimant had taken lucrative employment with a
solicitor to prove that vaccines featured in the
programme were dangerous, or that only four
months before the broadcast the claimant and Mr
Barr had submitted a “proposed protocol and
costing proposals” to the Legal Aid Board,
and had been awarded a £55,000 contract to
attempt to find fault with MR and MMR. Although
the second defendant’s production team came
to realize that the claimant’s views were
controversial, it had been led to believe that he
was an objective, independent scientist, and, in
good faith, they presented him as such to
viewers.
Additionally,
the second defendant and its employees did not
realize that the parents (Ms Fletcher, Ms
Kessick, Ms Hamlyn, and Ms Tilley) featured in
the programme were all clients of Mr Barr, hoping
to gain financially from a lawsuit against
manufacturers of the vaccines they had been given
a platform to criticise. The second defendant is
adamant that, had it known, it would have
incorporated this important information, since it
is wrong for a television programme to be
exploited to create unwarranted public anxiety,
or to fish for solicitors’ clients, without
at least the true position being made clear. The
potential to mislead, however, was mitigated by
the balanced tone adopted in the broadcast.
Finally,
the second defendant also did not know that the
claimant’s statement in the programme that
the longest trial of measles vaccine safety was
three weeks was, in fact, false. Had it known
this, it would not have produced that statement
for broadcast, or the claimant’s untrue and
irresponsible characterisation of measles vaccine
as a “potentially hazardous biological agent
about which nothing is known.” The claimant,
however, knew, or should have known, that what he
told a substantial ITV-1 audience was in these
respects false.
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