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America
resists as Britain's
vaccine scare is exportedFrom
the United States Court of Federal
Claims
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Below
is an extract from the resumed opening
address for the respondents of attorney
Vincent J Matonoski, of the United States
Department of Justice, before special masters
the Hons George L Hastings Jnr, Patricia
Campbell-Smith and Denise Vowell, on day 6 of
the test case Cedillo v Department of Health
& Human Services, Monday 18 June 2007
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A serious accusation
has been levelled. A serious accusation has been
levelled against an important part of the public
health arsenal against a preventable disease. An
accusation has been levelled that MMR vaccine causes
autism. And that accusation must be answered, and we
will answer it.
It’s serious and
it’s important, the issue before you. You know
that. It’s certainly important to the Cedillos.
It’s important, though, for another reason. This
accusation goes against a vaccine that is designed to
prevent a killing disease.
We forget that in
this country because we’ve been very fortunate.
We have not suffered a measles outbreak of any great
measure in many, many years. The world does not enjoy
our fortune. Four hundred and fifty thousand people
die every year from measles. Four hundred and fifty
thousand. Almost a half a million people die every
year from a preventable disease.
The threat remains
real in this country. It remains real, and we can
tell that from the experience that Great Britain had.
The United Kingdom went through a scare about
measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. That scare was based
on bad science. That scare was based on the work
primarily of one man, Andrew Wakefield.
What happened in
Great Britain can happen here. What happened there
was there was a lack of confidence in the MMR
vaccine. Vaccination rates dropped. Measles came
back. And unfortunately, tragically, several people
died.
It was bad science
that was at the heart of that scare. It was the work,
as I said, of Andrew Wakefield. He published an
article in 1998 called “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular
hyperplasia, nonspecific colitis and pervasive
developmental disorder in children”.
It doesn’t sound
that startling from the title, but he knew what the
impact was, and the impact was felt immediately. That
article, this study, that he came forward with,
launched a scare, a scare against vaccinating
children with MMR vaccine.
He claimed to find a
link between ILNH, ileal-lymphoid-nodular
hyperplasia, and autism, and that is what you’re
hearing in this case: ILNH and autism.
Now try as they
might, the petitioners are trying to say that this is
not about Dr Wakefield’s study, but his study is
at the fore. It catapulted this issue into the public
forum, it catapulted this issue into the
public’s mind.
You’ve heard a
bit about what happened with Andrew Wakefield and his
report, but I’m going to go back and pull those
strands together that you’ve heard through
cross-examination and put it together for you right
now in a timeline. I’m going to put it together
so you can see how it unfolded, and you are going to
see a history that ran from the United Kingdom over
to this country where it rests in this courtroom
today.
In 1996, Andrew
Wakefield was approached by attorneys. These
attorneys represented several parents who believed
that their children’s autism was caused by MMR.
Why Andrew Wakefield? Why him amongst other
physicians? Because he had previously tried to show
that measles vaccine caused Crohn’s disease. He
was unsuccessful in that, but the attorneys knew they
had their man.
They went to him.
They offered him money to look at their cases, to
consult with them. He went on to file a patent. In
1997, he filed a patent for a monovalent measles
vaccine, a vaccine that would directly compete with
the MMR vaccine, a vaccine he would stand to
substantially be enriched if the MMR vaccine were to
fall into disuse.
In 1998, he published
his study, “ILNH, nonspecific colitis and
pervasive developmental disorders in children”.
He published it in a very influential journal, the
Lancet. I’m sure in your work in vaccine cases
you’ve heard of that journal before.
He did not reveal at
that time that he had been contacted and received
money from lawyers, a material omission in the view
of the editors when they found that out later on. He
did not of course reveal that he had a competing, a
patent for a competing, vaccine to MMR. He went ahead
and presented this without revealing those critical
facts. They relied on it and published his study.
He also didn’t
reveal that several of the children - it was a very
small group, there were only 12 children - were
actually litigants that were being represented by the
attorneys who had given him money.
In 2000, he published
another article purporting to show the link between
MMR and autism. In 2002, his name again appears on an
article that you’ve seen referenced throughout
the reports here, throughout the reports of the
experts. It was the Uhlmann article, the PCR article.
In 2004, it began to
crash down upon him. In 2004, a series of newspaper
articles were published, the first one revealing his
contract, or the fact that he had received money from
attorneys who represented litigants bringing cases
alleging MMR caused autism.
The dogged work of
one journalist brought this to the fore. For six
years, it had remained hidden. When it was out in
public scrutiny, what happened? The co-authors on his
original study repudiated the results of that study.
They published it in the Lancet that they no longer
supported the interpretation that it was possible
that MMR could cause autism.
Dr O’Leary,
whose Unigenetics lab was publishing these results of
finding measles virus in the gut biopsies, publicly
said he did not support the assertion that MMR
vaccine caused autism. They all began to flee from
Andrew Wakefield. He alone was left with purporting
that there was some connection.
It’s now in our
courtroom. It’s made its way across the Atlantic
into our courtroom, and we have to deal with it now.
But we are going to put on the evidence this morning
and throughout this week that will allow you to
effectively deal with that, and to show you that MMR
vaccine is indeed safe.
This
text is excerpted and republished by Brian Deer, in the
public interest, as part of his continuing
investigation of the MMR vaccine scare. Full
transcripts of the Cedillo proceedings - the
first MMR test case, held between 11 and 26
June 2007 - are available from the United
States Court of Federal Claims
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