Guardian of What? The Guardian, the Science Lobby, and the Rise of Scientific Corporatism.
By Martin J Walker May 12, 2009 Denis Campbell was a sports reporter on the Observer newspaper, before he got the opportunity to write about health. In July 2007, he favoured a friend and interviewed Dr Andrew Wakefield, the consultant gastroenterologist at the centre of the MMR-autism controversy, the week prior to his GMC fitness-to-practice hearing. It was Campbell’s intention to present Dr Wakefield in the same way as any other pre-trial defendant, exploring his fears and feelings about slipping from a professional life into that of an infamous malefactor. In creating the article, however, Campbell, who had never entered the territory before, made the most serious mistake. Hearing of a paper produced by a department of Cambridge University that cited a considerable growth in cases of autism spectrum disorder, he linked this to Wakefield’s research work, which described a number of specific cases where the parents had pointed to the MMR vaccination as being key in the onset of a very particular form of regressive autism. This article analyses what can happen when journalists blunder into the case of Dr Andrew Wakefield, without understanding the complex context of the media, health and New Labour; ioncreasing pressure is being brought to bear on the British media to report only stories that agree with corporate science. When training interpreters, teachers place considerable emphasis on the student’s all-round knowledge of the culture into which they are translating. This is unfortunately not true of the post-industrial journalists, who tend to imagine that they are presenting titbits of disconnected information, rarely conceiving that their newspapers and others are pursuing political agendas. Denis Campbell evidently had no idea that by trying to present a broad social defence for Dr Wakefield, he was about to place his professional career as a journalist in jeopardy. Like many other people involved in the media, although he knew that New Labour was somehow involved in spin, he did not know that a group of erstwhile revolutionary communist, corporate scientists, Liberal peers and members of the New Labour administration had banded together to draw up a censorship code for the British media. In fact, Campbell was to find out on the publication of his Observer article, not only that the editors of the sister papers the Guardian and the Observer, both owned by the Scott Trust, had long been involved in an acrimonious argument, but that the Guardian was not the paper it had previously been. Since 2003, it seems to have passed from the stables of the free press into some Orwellian stew, where the news is consistently rewritten to fit a corporate view of science held by a handful of corporately-funded lobbyists. * * * MMR, the mumps, measles and rubella vaccination, was introduced to Britain in 1988. Its original introduction was seriously marred by adverse reaction to the Urabi mumps strain in the vaccination. It was not until 1992 that the Department of Health, downplaying the serious adverse events that had occurred using this particular strain, took two of the MMR vaccines off the market while making low-key and somewhat mumbled explanations to the public. Following this major problem, the Department of Health and successive governments were determined not to admit to any other problems in relation to this vaccination. Dr Wakefield, a senior researcher in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital, was approached by a gathering number of parents, after 1988, who claimed that their children had been adversely affected by the triple vaccine. These cases were brought to the Royal Free because often the first signs of adverse reaction to the vaccination were gastrointestinal. Initially, Dr Wakefield was sceptical about the department’s authority to deal with these cases. As well as reporting gastrointestinal conditions in their children, in the majority of cases that were brought to the Royal Free, parents reported signs of autism spectrum disorder. Dr Wakefield’s main area of expertise had, until the early 1990s been Crohn’s disease, a gastrointestinal condition that had markedly increased in recent years. Initially Dr Wakefield protested that he knew nothing about autism spectrum disorders, and suggested that perhaps the Royal Free was not the best place to bring these children. However, as the rest of the team carried out more tests and observations on the gastrointestinal conditions presented by the children, superficial case review conclusions became inevitable; either the children had all developed autism spectrum disorders ‘naturally’ and biologically inevitably, or the condition, together with the intestinal condition, had been triggered or exacerbated by environmental factors. After work over the next decade, Dr Wakefield came increasingly to the latter conclusion, and was convinced that it was the vaccine measles strain, in combination with the strains of mumps and rubella, that was responsible for the gastrointestinal condition and, in this relatively small subset of children, also for the regressive autism from which many of them suffered. Although Dr Wakefield tried hard to interest the Department of Health in the condition that his research had uncovered, and begged them to be more cautious in their vaccination campaign, it was six years before Dr David Salisbury, the Principal Medical Officer of the Communicable Disease Branch of the Department of Health, deigned to meet with him to discuss evidence of a public health crisis. Dr Wakefield continued to write up his research, and noted, as time passed, that even without a reasoned discussion about his research or the clinical work of the Royal Free Hospital, a campaign was being orchestrated against him. In 1998, he was one of 13 authors who published a paper in the Lancet reviewing the cases of 12 children who had passed through clinical tests and treatment at the Royal Free. As well as reviewing all the clinical evidence, the paper noted the view of 8 parents, that there was a link between MMR and the onset of children’s illnesses. >From the time of the Lancet paper’s publication, a propaganda offensive of >considerable power was turned against Dr Wakefield, and from this point >onwards, the parents who had reported an adverse reaction to the MMR >vaccination, were gradually made invisible. Wakefield, his research and the >clinical work of the department were roundly condemned. His identity and >character were covertly attacked, and in 2003, an article by Brian Deer in >Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, accused Dr Wakefield of some criminal and much >professional malfeasance. Deer followed up his Sunday Times article with a >Channel 4 television programme, on 18 November 2004. It always appeared to >those who were knowledgeable about Dr Wakefield’s work, that Brian Deer’s >reporting was based upon incomplete information. Read Walker's complete essay HERE. Martin J Walker is an investigative writer who has written four books about aspects of the medical industrial complex. He started focusing on conflict of interest, intervention by pharmaceutical companies in government and patient groups in 1993. Over the last three years he has been a campaign writer for the parents of MMR vaccine damaged children covering every day of the now two year hearing of the General Medical Council that is trying Dr Wakefield and two other doctors. His GMC accounts can be found at www.cryshame.com. You can read more about him and support his pro bono work in covering the GMC Hearings at www.slingshotpublications.com. http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/05/guardian-of-what-the-guardian-the-science-lobby-and-the-rise-of-scientific-corporatism.html http://www.rescuepost.com/.a/6a00d8357f3f2969e201156f8bdfef970c-pi ==== Doctors Writing Books, Making False Promises and Fudging Data for Profit May 14, 2009 Yesterday, the New York Times confirmed HERE that physicians have been known to publish studies that lie, and write books with the goal of affecting medical commerce. By doing so, they can dupe patients into accepting medical care that is not proven safe or effective. Dr. Timothy Kuklo took advantage of US soldiers. That's pretty bad. Almost as bad as taking advantage of infants and children, don't you agree? A former surgeon at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, who is a paid consultant for a medical company, published a study that made false claims and overstated the benefits of the company’s product in treating soldiers severely injured in Iraq, the hospital’s commander said Tuesday. During his time at Walter Reed Dr. Kuklo was extensively involved in research and writing about various Medtronic products, including editing two books published by the company and conducting three studies that were approved by his Army superiors, according to his list of publications and an Army report. http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/05/doctors-writing-books-making-false-promises-and-fudging-data-for-profit.html ==== Vaccines in Your Food? May 14, 2009 Thank you to A of A reader JA for this horrifying article. AMES, IOWA — Iowa State University researchers are putting flu vaccines into the genetic makeup of corn, which may someday allow pigs and humans to get a flu vaccination simply by eating corn or corn products. "We're trying to figure out which genes from the swine influenza virus to incorporate into corn so those genes, when expressed, would produce protein," said Hank Harris, professor in animal science and one of the researchers on the project. "When the pig consumes that corn, it would serve as a vaccine." This collaborative effort project involves Mr. Harris and Brad Bosworth, an affiliate associate professor of animal science working with pigs, and Kan Wang, a professor in agronomy, who is developing the vaccine traits in the corn. Read more HERE. http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/05/vaccines-in-your-food.html
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