Last week, I wrote about how the martyr of the modern antivax movement, Andrew Wakefield, is being openly accused of fraud by journalist Brian Deer and the British Medical Journal – with tons of evidence, I’ll add. Seeing as how Wakefield has been promoting the outright dangerous and potentially deadly antireality antivax idea for years, this news was welcomed by the skeptic community.
But that was only Part 1. The BMJ has just published Part 2: how Wakefield stood to make not just millions, not just tens of millions, but actually hundreds of millions of dollars by promoting the false link between the MMR vaccine with autism and Crohn’s disease.
He was paid quite a large sum of money by a lawyer, Richard Barr, to find that connection. We’ve known this for a long time, in fact; Deer wrote about this a while ago (as well as Wakefield’s vast conflict of interest involving developing his own version of the vaccine to replace the one being used). But this new article is important because it goes into a lot of detail – and, like his first article, is meticulously referenced and footnoted – providing an ironclad link between the money and Wakefield’s actions.
As Orac points out, antivaxxers love to accuse those of us who defend reality of being in the pay of Big Pharma (or whatever Big Nebulous Organization they can tenuously link us to), and many of them are outspoken about following the money. Will they do that here, and realize that by their own logic they have to abandon and even repudiate and censure Wakefield?
Right.
So with Jenny McCarthy still spouting dangerous nonsense, Meryl Dorey saying stuff so obviously wrong that a radio interviewer shut her down, and so many other antivax organizations willing to expose babies and the population at large to potentially fatal but preventable diseases, what can you do?
Please, please, please: if you know anyone at risk of being affected by antivax propaganda, send them to Immunize for Good. There is a wealth of factual information there, especially in their Fact or Fiction section.
That simple act can save lives. It’s that simple.
