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Did
she know about the dough?
After the
release of new figures for Andrew Wakefield's
legal
money to
attack the MMR vaccine, it's time for Jackie
Fletcher
(left) of JABS to make the position clear on
what she knew
COMMENT
by BRIAN DEER: New Year's Day 2007 |
Reaction
to my end of the year report revealing the fees the UK's Legal Services Commission
says it shelled out for paid witnesses and advisors
in the failed British MMR-autism litigation was,
shall we say, mixed.
I
mean, how do you respond when the LSC - august
guardian of the legal aid fund, which is meant to
afford poor people access to justice - says that,
between 1996 and 2004, it coughed-up £435,643,
plus expenses, for the services of Andrew Wakefield; and that, over a
fractionally longer period, a total of £3.4
million was paid for a group of his cronies, supporters,
associates and others, to attack the three-in-one
children's vaccine?
As
to what people did say: first the good news
- from the neurodiversity movement. These folk aren't
putting up with this vaccine scare shit, believing
that autistic kids (often their own) deserve better.
As 2006 drew to a close - and The Sunday Times
propagated online - the blogosphere fairly crackled
with discussion of my report on Andrew Wakefield's
dough. King of the Hub Kevin Leitch led the pack on
new year's eve with kind words (the cheque's in the
post):
"Luckily, Times
reporter Brian Deer is an actual reporter –
i.e. one who investigates his findings and
sources his facts. Today he published the
findings of his latest investigation into Andrew
Wakefield and the associated people that support
his vaccine/autism/legal financial
business."
Meanwhile,
comments on the anti-vaccine "Evidence of
Harm" bulletin board were predictably indignant
about my disclosures. Also on 31 December, Erik
"nasty" Nanstiel, a nobody from nowhere,
whose views I've seldom seen rise above idiocy and
abuse, demanded:
"Why doesn't someone
look to see where Deer is getting his money? The
guy is slime. All four feet eleven inches of him.
(he's quite short)."
The
answer to Erik Nanstiel's foolish question is,
unsurprisingly, straightforward enough. While his own
sentiments are mundane for a bulletin board devoted
to the absurd conspiracy theory that autism is
nothing more or less than mercury poisoning from
vaccines, anybody living on planet earth who may be
thinking of looking up my paymasters would stumble
upon a newspaper and a TV station. (oh, and by the
way, I'm five feet nine).
But
poison oozes in the anti-vaccine movement, and Erik
Nanstiel isn't alone in his mindset. In contrast with
controversy in the 1970s and 1980s over the triple diphtheria, tetanus and
pertussis
(DTP) shot - a combined vaccine which credible,
decent, people believed might be linked (through the
whooping cough component) to permanent brain damage -
the MMR row, which in many ways mirrors that over
DTP, has been perverted by hideous abuse. Whether of
public health doctors, paediatricians, family
physicians, scientists, and even journalists, gross
insinuations of corruption have fermented in the more
warped threads of the worldwide web.
Cheering
it on are some of the more desperate scribes for
British newspapers and magazines. One fountainhead is
Private Eye, which in May 2002 spewed forth an
"MMR special report". This left no doubt
that Wakefield was right, and that many of those who
disagreed with him were tainted. For example, three
quarters of a page was devoted to "conflicts of
interest", which in essence compressed to this:
"In the recent
Medical Research Council review of the ten-fold
rise in autism rates, three members were advisers
to the defendant drug companies [named]... Even
the chair [named], has shares in Glaxo-Wellcome.
No wonder parents were sceptical when the review
decided not to recommend research into the
MMR-autism controversy... Meanwhile on the MRC
ad-hoc group set up to look at Dr Andrew
Wakefield's work on the 12 children at the Royal
Free, there were four drug company advisers
[named]... No wonder Wakefield felt ambushed...
The industry influence pervades Britain's public
health laboratory service (PHLS) too. It's head
of immunisation [named], lists five
'non-personal' interests - payments which go to
her department rather than her own purse."
How
did the Private Eye reporter, Heather Mills, learn these facts? Well,
because the people in question had declared them. Why
did she report them? Well, to attack MMR, even
acknowledging on the back cover three litigants as
her advisers, although she didn't bill them as such.
Of course, nobody doubts the influence of industry on
medicine. I've even won an award in this area. But, for the
most part, the victims of media smears over MMR in
recent years have been specialists opposing the
campaign by Wakefield (interests undisclosed)
over the threat it posed to children's health.
Back
to Evidence of Harm on new year's eve, where Erik
Nanstiel's bile is swallowed by "Andrea":
"Well there you go
Erik.... Dr Wakefield is a very tall dashingly
handsome man. Mr Deer most certainly must be
suffering from 'little man syndrome' spurred on
by his utter jealously of tall handsome Dr
Wakefield. I've seen this before.. it's not
pretty.."
And
so it goes on. Erik Nanstiel, continuing his
pus-drenched tirade, pops back to snarl at Andrea:
"Deer is not what he
seems. He's not championing children or shutting
down quacks. He has to be on the take."
I
often get extreme abuse of this type. Try this from Carol Stott (who, according to the LSC,
soaked £100,000 from the lawsuit), or another award, that I won last year. But
many emails I receive are merely insulting, such as
one yesterday from a Linda Soderburg. Even while
Kevin Leitch was probably updating his blog for new
year, and Erik Nanstiel was prodding his anus for
something fresh to say, Ms Soderburg demanded:
"Why are you trying
to invalidate Dr. Wakefield's findings? Of course
he received funds, he worked... Who hired you to
write these articles? How much are you getting
paid?"
Linda
got no reply. Life's too short. But I thought she
made a relevant point. Surely (one might at least propose)
a doctor of Wakefield's alleged accomplishments is
entitled to reasonable financial support for such an
elaborate and sustained attack on MMR? In this case,
it was apparently more than four hundred grand
sterling (which one helpful blogger converted to
US.$780,000), courtesy of the British taxpayer.
At
Wakefield's own bulletin board - naturally - this
notion was well-voiced. Surely everyone gets
paid for their labour? Here's Jennifer Hall, who says
she's a former paralegal for an insurance lawyer,
writing to the former surgeon's Yahoo group:
"We routinely had to
hire “expert witnesses”, doctors, and
other experts for testimony for cases. After the
case was decided we had more briefs to file,
showing the expenses for the case, and we always
had to pay the experts and that had to be shown
to the courts. The experts weren’t just
allowed to do it for free, there were steps that
had to be followed. It would look wrong for them
not to be paid as well... Knowing that a doctor
was paid for testifying in a case would just seem
like standard practice to me, and nothing to
indicate that he was doing it to benefit in any
way."
Good
try Jennifer, but I'd say you're revising The
Wakefield Story So Far. Those who aren't career
aficionados of the British-exported MMR debacle - for
which Wakefield is responsible - may not recall that
in February 2004, when the first part of my Sunday Times investigation into MMR was published, it
not only provoked a national uproar, but also
triggered the retraction by Wakefield's former
colleagues of the claim that he'd found any possible
MMR-autism link at all.
Had
the UK's journalists all suddenly gone "on the
take"? Or was the response because his deal
wasn't known? British readers will remember the sense
of "Ah, now I get it," which was
the beginning of the end of the MMR scare. People had
always believed that Wakefield was a maverick, but at
least he was independent, unlike those
drug-company stooges who you read about in Private
Eye. Nowhere in that magazine's 32-page special
issueof 2002, for instance, did it say that he was
employed by lawyers to attack the shot.
Even
two years after my old fashioned reporting scoop,
parents who'd hoped to benefit from the failed
lawsuit, were still battling to pull the sting of my
stories. Leading the initiative in the UK was one
John Stone, who I recommend as a vacation buddy for
Erik Nanstiel. Stone is a doyen of persistent petty
complainers [read an example here], most celebrated in my
reckoning for having hassled the British Medical
Journal into publishing a "correction" to a
review of my November 2004 Channel 4 Dispatches investigation of Wakefield - only for the
journal then to publish a retraction of the
"correction", since what Stone had told
them was bollocks.
When
Stone's not competing with Erik Nanstiel for charm
school auditions, he works with JABS, the British
anti-MMR group, run by Jackie Fletcher from the
north-west of England. And - get this - just a little
more than five months before my end-of-2006 release
of the Legal Services Commission figures, Stone and
Jackie were trumpeting their success in gaining a
"correction" from the BBC. More than two
years previously, the national broadcaster had
followed me and reported that Wakefield was paid
for research - would you believe - and the JABS
crowd weren't standing for that.
To
announce their victory, they issued a press release.
Here it is, somewhat tediously, in full:
JABS Press Release
10 July 2006
BBC withdraws allegation that Dr Andrew
Wakefield was paid to conduct MMR investigation
Following reports in the Sunday Times on 22
February 2004 the Prime Minister told BBC news:
"I hope now that people will see the
situation is somewhat different from what they
were led to believe...."
The same report went on to state:
"Dr Wakefield was being paid by Legal Aid to
examine whether parents who claim their children
were damaged by MMR had a case. Some children
were involved in both studies. The Lancet says it
was never told of this."
Now, after more than two years the BBC has
accepted that Dr Wakefield was not paid to
undertake this investigation. Health safety
campaigner, John Stone, pressed the BBC to
correct inaccurate statements. He reports:
"After extensive private representations the
BBC has withdrawn its claim that Andrew Wakefield
was paid to investigate whether children had been
damaged by MMR vaccine on behalf of
litigants."
A BBC report dated 4 March 2004 'MMR researchers
issue retraction' stated:
"It followed the discovery that Andrew
Wakefield was carrying out a second study at the
time. He was being paid to see whether there was
any evidence to support a possible legal action
by a group of parents who claimed their children
were damaged by the vaccine."
The text now reads:
"Funding was provided to the hospital where
his team worked for the study, which was
investigating if there was any evidence to
support possible legal action by a group of
parents who claimed their children were damaged
by the vaccine."
Although the report says it was last updated on 4
March 2004, it was in fact changed this week. At
least one other BBC report has been similarly
modified.
The payment was one of a number of serious
allegations raised against Dr Wakefield. The
General Medical Council (GMC) has been
investigating whether to charge him or not for
the last two years and to date no formal charges
have been laid. No parent of any of the children
who were under his team's care have made adverse
remarks or allegations against Dr Wakefield. The
original allegations, Jabs believes, came from a
hostile journalist.
Dr Wakefield has insisted he has done nothing
wrong and says the science behind his study still
stands. He welcomed the GMC investigation.
"I not only welcome this, I insist on
it," he said. "Serious allegations have
been made against me in relation to the provision
of clinical care for children with autism and
bowel disease, and the subsequent reporting of
their disease."
Jabs believes the only serious issue Dr Wakefield
is guilty of is listening to the parents,
investigating the children and reporting his
findings.
Contact details:
John Stone - 0208 888 7109
Jackie Fletcher - 01942 713565
Jonathan Harris - 0121 722 3004
About Jabs:
Jabs is a support group for parents who believe
their children have been damaged by vaccines.
Jabs neither recommends nor advises against
vaccinations but we aim to promote understanding
about immunisations and offer basic support to
any parent whose child has a health problem after
vaccination.
For further background information:
See earlier Jabs Forum topic "Wakefield was
not paid to investigate damage"
I
don't know about you, but, in the light of the new
figures, to me this press release smells like evidence.
Did the esteemed Jackie Fletcher (and indeed John
Stone and Jonathan Harris) know about Wakefield's
dough when they launched their indignant crusade
against a minor BBC news story, and, indeed when they
later crowed, in the text reprinted above, after a
few words in that story may have been changed? Any
reading of their press release would surely suggest
that they didn't know: that my
report of this weekend was, well, news. The
other possibility - that they did know about
the dough - would, I think, have a Nanstiel aroma.
My
personal belief is that Jackie didn't know:
she's what underworld circles call "the
dope". This is a homely person of basic honesty
and conviction, who is manouvered into fronting a
game. (In case you're a true MMR anorak, I feel much
the same about Professor John Walker-Smith, the former Royal Free
paediatric gastroenterologist, who most certainly
didn't embark on the practice of medicine to act
contrary to the best interests of children.) As it
happens, the drug companies now allege that evidence
exists to suggest that Jackie's tragically disabled
son Robert (who I think suffers from what once would
have been called "post-pertussis vaccine
encephalopathy" until that condition was found
to have been invented by lawyers and their experts)
didn't even receive the MMR vaccine in the first
place. But, I've never felt that JABS's founder
wasn't sincere. I think she's wrong, but not
dishonest.
Further
evidence on this point - that Jackie didn't know
- comes from Wakefield himself, in an email. On 22
December, he responded to one from me (which I was
duty-bound to send him) in anticipation of this
weekend's story. Most of his reply was yesterday
published as a "statement" (Andy's always
been very grand: he gets it from his father) on his
Thoughtful House business website. But his email was
marked as copied to a number of others: at Thoughtful
House, Visceral and JABS. Jackie, therefore, was
well-primed on what was to come.
It's
was as if he wanted to tell her before I
did.
His
email was pure Wakefield: as slippery as condom lube.
Try this on his disclosure of the money:
"My role as an expert
was declared as a conflict of interest in
relevant publications (see references below) that
discussed the possible role of MMR vaccine
intestinal disease and autism and to journal
editors. I have referenced the relevant
publications below for your convenience."
Underneath,
he does so, as he's done in his statement, with two
articles published after my first stories:
Stott C et al Journal of
American Physicians and Surgeons 2004;9:89-91
Wakefield AJ et al. Medical Veritas
2006;3:796-802
Surely
some mistake: for he authored a string of MMR
attacks, going back to February 1998.
Where's the famous Lancet report that launched the
scare? Or the notorious "Through a glass
darkly" review of January 2001, that triggered a
fresh collapse in immunisation rates? Could it be
that Wakefield only declared his legal work (and then
only vaguely, and misleadingly, a couple of times)
once everyone - through The Sunday Times - already
knew?
But
here's the key point, which I'm sure Jackie noted,
since she's the mother of MMR aficionados. I should
stress, moreover, that these words are now published,
in identical form (with one sentence transposed), on
the Thoughtful House website. Here we go:
"The money that I
received was, after tax and out of pocket
expenses, donated to an initiative to create a
new center, in the first instance at the Royal
Free Hospital, for the care of autistic children
and those with bowel disease. This was
unsuccessful at the Royal Free but ultimately
succeeded in the US. This intention was made
clear, in writing, to senior members of the
medical school."
Ah,
I see: he gave the dough away. And he can prove this
intention. Wey-hey! So either Thoughtful
House, or the Royal Free hospital, received a
whacking pile of money?
I
say: what?
Not
surprisingly, however, his admirers have pounced on
this claim as evidence of their man's core integrity.
Although exactly what he did - or didn't -
do with the money is of no relevance to what lawyers
would call his "pecuniary advantage", the
idea of him handing over everything but "tax and
out of pocket expenses" to good causes has the
aura of a hero, does it not? My first thought is that
he may be setting up a situation where his pals in
America might read the statement to say that he
donated the money in Britain, while his British
associates think it says some Americans got it.
Although the published accounts that I've seen of a
number of his organisations - such as Visceral and
Thoughtful House - report nothing about him
giving them money, but only of them
giving him money (which isn't a particularly
tax-efficient form of philanthropy), that's neither
here nor there. For now.
But
here's the big snag in Wakefield's explanation, which
Jackie might care to ponder. In a second email to me,
dated 26 December, this apparently very tall,
dashingly handsome man, for whom I'm alleged to feel
nothing but utter jealousy, elaborated on his
charitable initiatives. With regard to the surplus,
over and above what he called "tax and
out-of-pocket expenses" (the latter of which the
Legal Services Commission, in fact, bills separately
at just £3,910, on top of what it says were his fees
of £435,643), he explained what he said he'd meant
on 22 December. You may recall him telling me (as he
tells Thoughtful House's clientele) that the money
was:
"...donated to an
initiative to create a new center, in the first
instance at the Royal Free Hospital, for the care
of autistic children and those with bowel
disease."
And,
furthermore, that this intention:
"was made clear, in
writing, to senior members of the medical
school."
I
don't know whether he sent his subsequent update to
Jackie, but on 26 December he elaborated to me:
"The letter to the
Dean, copied to other senior members of the
medical school, describing my efforts to create a
new centre for the care of patients with
inflammatory bowel disease, is dated 30th March
1995."
And:
"I say this just in
case you were tempted to say that you had
contacted the medical school but no one knew
anything about it."
Well,
I didn't contact the medical school. It was
Christmas, after all. But you could knock me down
with an endoscope. Riddle me this Jackie. I can't
work it out. Do you know where the bodies are buried?
How could Wakefield have proposed in March 1995 any
venture relevant to the topic in hand? This was
before he'd even heard of MMR's autistic Patient
Zero: one William Kessick, son of Nanstiel clone Rosemary Kessick. You, Jackie, have told me
that you only heard of Wakefield in April 1995, when
you both appeared on a television programme
concerning his (now abandoned) theory that measles
vaccine caused Crohn's disease. And, by
Wakefield's own claims to The Sunday Times, his legal
deal began at the beginning of 1996, before
which he didn't know about the lawyers.
Although
one has to note, en passant (as they say in
chess), that the 22 December email's "new
centre" for "the care of autistic children
and those with bowel disease" has four days
later morphed into "a new centre for the care of
patients with inflammatory bowel disease", the
idea that even the mysteriously prescient Wakefield
was sufficiently so in early 1995 to volunteer income
to anything at all from unknown future
employment in the MMR litigation is incredible, even
by his standards.
So
who's fooling who? I have to ask. Call it a new
year's resolution to find out. Erik Nanstiel, no
doubt, will fish something from his toilet to the
effect that my quest must be corrupt. But I think we
should be told at least what Jackie knew. And then
perhaps we can take it from there. Together we can
ask, what did everybody know? And what does everybody
know about this now? As I said to Our Andy in our
recent email exchange:
"I appreciate that it
may yet be some time before we fully grasp the
scope and detail of your financial
arrangements."
Grasp
them we must, however. They fundamentally go to
motive.
But
we don't need to get nasty like Nanstiel. Andy was
captain of rugby, at a fee-paying school. I shivered
on the sidelines, at a comprehensive. He's a good six
foot. I'm five feet nine. Such matters don't seem
hugely consequential.
"With best wishes for
a happy Christmas..."
is
how I signed off to the man
"...and a New Year
appropriate to your circumstances."