Max
Clifford manages his own PR as
Wakefield spin campaign is derailed
Brian
Deer reports on a story that was not to be
Sunday 21 February 2010
Max Clifford - the
man dubbed “the world’s most famous
publicist” - says he was drawn into an
involvement with Andrew Wakefield by claims that the
drug industry was behind the discredited MMR
doctor’s arraignment in front of the UK’s
General Medical Council.
In a heated phone
call yesterday aiming to head off a newslisted Sunday
Times report on plans by his company, Max Clifford
Associates, to represent Wakefield, Clifford said
that it was on the basis of allegations of sinister
industry activities that he became interested.
Clifford, 66,
explained that he had been approached by Carol Stott, a Wakefield personal
employee, and told that the GMC’s case against Wakefield and two
other doctors, alleging serious professional
misconduct, was being manipulated behind the scenes.
“I was told that
there were vast sums of money from pharmaceutical
companies involved in discrediting these
people,” he told me.
Clifford’s
Saturday afternoon call followed an exchange with his
daughter, Louise Clifford, who the previous day had
appeared to confirm that a campaign was being planned
to try to rehabilitate Wakefield.
“They are
looking to take us on for a few months to try to put
the balance right, really, and to try to get some
good publicity for Andrew, and what he believes
in,” said Ms Clifford, 38.
Her admission came
just three days after Wakefield was let go by
Thoughtful House - a business he founded in Austin,
Texas - and less than three weeks after the Lancet retracted his sham MMR research paper of February 1998, which
ignited public fear that vaccines may be linked to
autism.
Ms Clifford said that
a key part of the strategy would be to recruit
experts who endorsed Wakefield's views. "Max has
said that for the British media, if we had a
professor, scientist, researcher from the States, you
know, it has a lot more impact... to the media it
holds that much more authority."
But she recognised
that the task would not be easy, coming after
Wakefield had been ruled “dishonest”,
“unethical” and “callous” by a
statutory tribunal of the GMC, following 197 days of
evidence, submissions and deliberation.
“Our campaign is
going to be an uphill struggle to get some good
publicity, and to get people to question: ‘is
there another point of view here, is this the full
story?’” she said.
Ms Clifford, however,
is an experienced publicist. Among her previous
challenges was a campaign to rehabilitate
entrepreneur Gerald Ratner, whose national jewellery
chain collapsed in 1991, after he described his own
products as “total crap”.
But, despite her
enthusiasm, in the phone call from her father any
suggestion of a campaign was rejected. “We are
not involved, and we will not get involved unless
they are backed by top medical experts,” he
said. “We aren’t being paid a penny at the
moment.”
Max Clifford - whose
clients have included illusionist David Copperfield,
Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed and record producer
Simon Cowell, and who refused to represent Michael
Jackson after the late singer was found innocent of
child abuse - said his word on the matter was
definitive.
“It’s my
company, and my daughter works for me,” he said.
Stott, a freelance
researcher, paid in recent years through several
Wakefield enterprises, has made such allegations of
industry involvement on a number of occasions, but
has never produced any evidence.
In 2004, she was
suspended from a junior post at Cambridge university and later censured by the British Psychological Society, after a hate mail campaign,
during which she claimed that the university’s
research into autism was being influenced by a drug
firm.
Wakefield has made
similar unsubstantiated allegations, and it’s
understood that Stott was intended to be a conduit
through which American anti-vaccine campaigners would
channel money to fund a public relations initiative
for Wakefield, masterminded by Max Clifford
Associates.
Two names were given
to us, by a reliable contact, as likely sources of
money. These were J B Handley of Generation Rescue, a
group fronted by actress Jenny McCarthy, and Mark
Blaxill, of the group Safeminds, which has claimed
that autism is nothing but mercury poisoning.
These names were put
to Ms Clifford, who said that she didn’t
recognise Handley’s, but she appeared to take
the bait over Blaxill. “Right, Mark. Okay. Mark
is...” But then she paused to ask: “Brian,
what’s your background?”
Asked whether it
wouldn’t be irresponsible to potentially take
money to possibly promote what could develop into a
renewed public health alarm that risked
children’s lives, she said she refuted that
suggestion.
“What
Carol’s concerned about, and obviously Andrew,
is presenting the facts as they see them,” she
insisted. “And a lot of American professors are
behind him.”
She said: “We
are not trying to create any sort of alarm. We are
trying to represent a man who has been represented in
a very narrow way.”
Stott first
approached Max Clifford in 2008, when she persuaded
him to attend a session of the mammoth GMC hearing in
London, during which he sat in the public area as
Wakefield was cross-examined. “I was interested
in the subject,” he explained yesterday.
But he suggested that
contact had resumed more recently, apparently in the
aftermath of GMC findings of fact handed down on 28
January. These found Wakefield guilty of some three
dozen charges in connection with his MMR research,
including four counts of dishonesty and 12 involving
the abuse of autistic children.
Five days later, the
Lancet retracted Wakefield’s research. "It
was utterly clear, without any ambiguity at all, that
the statements in the paper were utterly false,"
Dr Richard Horton, the journal’s editor, told
The Guardian. "I feel I was deceived."
The following day, Dr
Joan Marie Cranmer, editor of the specialist journal
Neurotoxicology, told her New York publisher that she
would withdraw a new Wakefield paper, already
released online, which also claimed to incriminate
vaccines.
It’s understood
that Cranmer "took another look at the
paper" in the light of a GMC finding of research
dishonesty, but a spokesman for the publisher,
Elsevier, declined to comment. “It would be
inappropriate to go into a lot of detail,” he
said.
The Neurotoxicology
decision is believed to have been the last straw at Thoughtful House, a centre founded in 2005 by
the rich parents of developmentally-challenged
children. The clinic was set up to enable Wakefield
to continue activities which in October 2001 saw him
fired from a London research position, and which
eventually led to the GMC charges.
Thoughtful House has
repeatedly aroused suspicions among doctors of
continuing Wakefield’s practice of causing
unnecessary ileocolonoscopies to be performed on
autistic children in bids to get tissues from their
small intestines for research.
“We fully
support his decision to leave,” said a terse,
142-word statement from the centre, issued on the
evening of 17 February, and referring to him only as
“Dr Wakefield”. At 10am the following
morning, his name was erased from the front of the
Thoughtful House website, and a previous statement,
criticising the GMC, was taken down.
In further brief
comment on the departure, Jane Johnson, a Thoughtful
House board member and also executive director of the
US Defeat Autism Now organisation of alternative
practitioners, said that those who knew Wakefield
"will not find it implausible" that he quit
for the good of the centre.
Observers say that
the doctor may now be the victim of a domino effect,
which threatens to see him lose his fellowship of the
UK's Royal College of Pathologists, which he obtained
in 2001 on the basis of a submission of his
publications, and even potentially spark the collapse
of a new celebrity-led American anti-vaccine
movement.
In
recent weeks, dozens of American newspapers,
including The New York Times, The San Francisco
Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times have published
editorials condemning his conduct.
“Hippocrates
would puke,” the New York Daily News headlined
its opinion of Wakefield two weeks ago.
“Doctor hoaxed parents into denying kids
vaccine.”
The
turnaround in his fortunes marks the climax of a Sunday Times investigation, which, in a series of
revelations since February 2004, triggered the GMC
inquiry, the Lancet’s belated retraction, and
what appears to be Wakefield’s professional
ruin.
His
American publicist said last week that an appeal over
the GMC’s decisions will be lodged in the High
Court in London, but Wakefield himself has said
nothing since issuing a statement last month.
“The
allegations against me and against my colleagues are
both unfounded and unjust,” he declared in a
dramatic scene outside the GMC's London
offices. “I repeat, unfounded and
unjust.”
In light of the
still-growing scandal around the beleaguered doctor,
Max Clifford was understandably concerned about the
potential impact of any association. After our
Saturday afternoon conversation, in which he four
times dictated that he was “not involved”
with Wakefield, he called a senior Sunday Times
executive.
Afterwards, I was
told: “I think there is absolutely no chance
that he will ever work with Wakefield, and he
practically said as much.”
***
Postscript:
With regard to the Neurotoxicology withdrawal, the
journal's editor issued the following statement:
“Scientific integrity and good science are
fundamental principles for publication of research
articles in Neurotoxicology. Although
rare, the journal withdraws papers whenever these
essential principles are cast into doubt. The January
28, 2010 UK General Medical Council ruling of
research dishonesty by Dr Andrew Wakefield cast
into doubt the scientific integrity of a new related
paper co-authored by Wakefield. However, it
would be inappropriate for either me or the other
editors to discuss the specific factors
publicly. Professor Joan M Cranmer, Editor,
Neurotoxicology."