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 of the British anti-vaccine group 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?
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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, 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 xxx xxxx
Jackie Fletcher – 01942 xxxxxx
Jonathan Harris – 0121 xxx xxxxAbout 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” 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 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.
“With best wishes for a happy Christmas…”
is how I signed off to the man
“…and a New Year appropriate to your circumstances.”
Postscript: The day after this commentary was posted, Wakefield abandoned a lawsuit against Brian Deer, which had earlier been criticised by a High Court judge. Later, Wakefield’s lawyers sent Deer a cheque to cover the costs of defending this website.
Checked later, Wakefield made no such donation to the medical school. He simply lied.
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