Not since Autism Investigated’s founding has the editor challenged the vaccine people at their own events. But on March 6, vaccine developer Peter Hotez came to University of North Florida to deny he poisoned his daughter Rachel into autism. He transcribed his denial into a book, titled Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism. Compared to past encounters between 2011-2013, both Hotez and the venue that hosted him were surprisingly friendly. The level of nonsense spewed was about the same, however.
Although the event was an “Autism Symposium,” Hotez spent much of his talk discussing infectious diseases. Among those were the neglected tropical diseases that he spent his career researching. He spent relatively little time discussing his daughter, although he was clear that she was very severely afflicted. He repeated the usual mantra of no link to autism, of course, mentioning the fraudulent retraction of the seminal autism-vaccine study. Hotez went even further to deny there is not even an autism epidemic. “It’s really better diagnosis.” The one good thing about his talk was when he plugged and read from Autism Investigated’s meme about him.
Autism Investigated attended the event with Maurine Meleck, a longtime reader, advocate, author and grandmother of two men diagnosed with autism. One of them is recovered, but the other is still disabled and she cares for him. Unexpectedly, she was the first to ask a question. When she brought up the recovery of one of her grandsons and the improvement of the other, Hotez completely denied recovery was even possible for autism. “You don’t recover from autism,” he said.
“I didn’t say there’s no epidemic,” he said.
Another questioner said she felt there was a real autism epidemic. Then the mic finally was passed to Autism Investigated.
Hotez was then asked about the seminal 1998 autism-vaccine study coauthors’ fraudulent retraction of the interpretation. Hotez didn’t even know about the coauthors’ retraction, “I think it was an expression of concern.” He was corrected, having been told how the coauthors’ retraction had nothing to do with the accuracy of the conclusion but was really a statement in favor of vaccines, making it a fraudulent retraction. Hotez mentioned that the lead author Andrew Wakefield lost his medical license. When Autism Investigated informed him that it was because he didn’t cosign the fraudulent retraction, Hotez deferred to talk afterwards.
He did compliment Autism Investigated’s post on JB Handley, ironically, saying, “You’re one of the nice ones.” Of course, that’s comparing the editor to someone who’s not nice to other vaccine skeptics simply because they don’t think he’s the smartest man in the room.
The event was ultimately one giant paradox. It was an event that was strangely out of sync with other events where the response by other pro-vaccine speakers like Paul Offit were overtly hostile. Yet the event was ultimately the same in its pushing of nonsense to promote toxic vaccinations. Hotez will never stop being in denial of his daughter’s autism, for it would mean that vaccines were involved.
Autism Investigated is scooping its planned obituary for senior turncoat author John Walker-Smith when he dies. He turns 82 this year.
Gastroenterologist and senior Wakefield turncoat author John Walker-Smith has just died. Before retiring in 2000, he was a colleague of Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s at the Royal Free Hospital where they published a number of papers on autism and bowel disease. One of those was their seminal 1998 paper that first described a connection between autism, bowel disease and vaccination. Walker-Smith would later infamously retract the possibility of a vaccine link with nine other coauthors in 2004.
Despite his betrayal of vaccine-injured children in doing so, many of their parents continued to support him. When he was practicing medicine, he had treated and helped many children with autism whose gastrointestinal symptoms were dismissed by other doctors. Had his medical contributions ended there, he would be rightly seen as a hero. But that was not to happen, as he would betray the very children he helped.
The year after Walker-Smith retired from medicine, Dr. Andrew Wakefield was run out of the Royal Free Hospital for their research. Following his dismissal, the hospital’s GlaxoSmithKline-backed Head of Medicine Mark Pepys launched an aggressive campaign to discredit the work Walker-Smith and Wakefield conducted and obstruct vaccine injury litigation. Wakefield never wavered, but Walker-Smith eventually did.
Pepys started his attacks first by intimidating the 1998 paper’s coauthors still employed at Royal Free. Then through leaking medical records to a freelance opposition researcher, Pepys targeted Wakefield and Walker-Smith directly. Within weeks of allegations of unethical research publicized against them both, Walker-Smith signed his name to the infamous retraction.
Although he would successfully appeal the allegations and strike them down in court, he kept his name on the retraction. Not once did he demand the journal reinstate the 1998 paper nor demand his medical board reinstate Dr. Wakefield’s license.
Yet Walker-Smith still enjoys considerable support in the autism community which he does not deserve. No one has done more to make censorship of vaccine injury more publicly acceptable than John Walker-Smith. His betrayal of vaccine-injured children will be his everlasting legacy.
A doctor heavily backed by GlaxoSmithKline who took credit for Dr. Andrew Wakefield leaving the Royal Free Hospital made his coauthors fraudulently retract the interpretation in his paper. Seven of the 10 coauthors were working for Royal Free when they signed their names to the statement, including lead turncoat Simon Murch. Wakefield even predicted the Royal Free hierarchy would force Murch’s retraction months before.
1. He has a real conflict of interest-having initially declined his appointment at the Royal Free until I had been removed. The following are extracts from Professor Pepys’ attendance note with Kate Emmerson of Field Fisher Waterhouse, the GMC’s lawyers, on 12th April 2005.
2. Having taken up this appointment, (his above condition having been rejected [Pepys’ bluff had been called]), in the company of the Dean and the School Secretary, he confirmed to me that, despite having strong negative opinions about my research, he had never actually read any of it.
3. A book is due to be published later this year covering Professor Pepys’ activities in relation to my work. It will allege, supported by documentary evidence, conspiracy to execute a bribe with a senior academic from another institution in order to destroy peer-reviewed grant-awarded research looking at vaccine safety. This book will unfortunately be a source of major embarrassment for UCL and The Royal Free. May I suggest you ask Professor Pepys to provide you with his email traffic from the relevant period October 1999 to 2002? This traffic has already been examined by third parties.
4. Professor Pepys’ extreme bias against me has been evident throughout my dealings with him. He expressed this in public in his Harverian oration, as well as on the BBC.
5. He is deeply conflicted due to his relationship with vaccine manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline. He is totally unsuited to lead any investigation of my research.
Pepys is now leading GlaxoSmithKline vaccine trials. How could any patient possibly enroll in a vaccine trial led by this guy when he promotes covering up vaccine side-effects?
Any decent human being should demand that any drug trial led by Sir Mark Pepys be shut down.
10 coauthors fraudulently retracted the interpretation from the Wakefield autism-vaccine paper. Seven were still working for the hospital that fired him when they signed their names to the retraction. They include lead turncoat author Simon Murch, who used his hospital email address in the retraction. His retraction was predicted by lead author Andrew Wakefield in the above quote to a British newspaper four months prior. That was when Murch began campaigning for vaccines.
That’s because its real plans were withdrawing its employees names from the interpretation of the landmark autism-vaccine paper. Four months later, that’s exactly what happened.
Before the 10 coauthors’ retraction, the letter by Peter Harvey shared on Autism Investigated defended the Wakefield paper from earlier attacks from lead turncoat Simon Murch. Murch’s attacks were made in a series of letters to The Lancet, the first of which was published in November 2003.
His first letter was a response to a September letter by doctors unconnected to the Wakefield paper describing two children who developed measles encephalitis. Both had been vaccinated.
many epidemiological studies have been undertaken, the results of which indicate no causal relation. No other vaccine has ever been studied in such depth, and the evidence for its overall safety is comprehensive.
There is now unequivocal evidence that MMR is not a risk factor for autism—this statement is not spin or medical conspiracy, but reflects an unprecedented volume of medical study on a worldwide basis. By any rational standards of risk/benefit calculation, it is an illogical and potentially dangerous mistake for parents to be prepared to take their children in a car on the motorway or in an aeroplane on holiday, but not to protect them with the MMR vaccine. An unprotected child is not only at personal danger, but represents a potential hazard to others, including unborn children. Unless vaccine uptake improves rapidly, major measles epidemics are likely in the UK this winter.
It was that letter that Dr. Harvey would later respond to, as would autism parent David Thrower. Their responses would be published in the February 14th issue of The Lancet. That was the week before the journal’s editor stated that he wished he censored vaccination from the Wakefield paper and two weeks before the interpretation retraction. A follow-up letter by Murch responding to Thrower and Dr. Harvey was published in the same issue as their letters.
That some regulatory authorities ridiculed all aspects of these studies is unfortunate because it has allowed confirmation of the intestinal lesion to be appropriated by the anti-MMR lobby.
Then in a truly Orwellian move, Murch compares criticizing the tobacco science of the vaccine industry to tobacco industry science!
Thrower’s suggested tactic, in which every study that shows an unwanted outcome is destruction-tested from a hostile viewpoint, is essentially that used for years by the tobacco industry.
Measles in the gut? No big deal!
If traces of measles virus indeed prove to be detectable in 90% of cases, it surely cannot be causal, since such numbers of children would show up on the crudest epidemiological assessment.
I see families in my clinic almost every week who have given their children single measles vaccine. Those who have gone on to give rubella and mumps vaccines are in the minority, months and sometimes years later. That is the heart of the issue. Personal choice cannot extend to compromising the safety of other people’s children.
The day before Murch’s 2003 letter was published, he scooped his support of the MMR vaccine to a major UK television network.
Throughout this same period, Murch also claimed he had no financial interest. As you will all see, that wasn’t true either.
Despite claiming to have “empathy” for autism families, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb has none. The FDA chief who gave false testimony to Congress about vaccines believes vaccine injury experts should be summarily censored. He also believes expert witnesses to vaccine injury should not be allowed to publish their findings.
Fears about autism have been a growing impediment to higher vaccination rates – and thus a growing public-health danger.
[Andrew Wakefield’s] original research on this issue was already controversial – 10 of the 13 authors retracted some of the findings in 2004, but Wakefield, its lead author, has not.
The “retraction” happened when the editor of The Lancet decided that expert witnesses to vaccine injury should not be allowed to publish on vaccines. That editor Richard Horton then bullied those 10 coauthors into signing a statement supporting combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccination. Gottlieb cites this “retraction” as evidence against the paper.
Now he has barred his senior staff from meeting with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other proponents of a vaccine safety commission.
Regardless, Scott Gottlieb should not be FDA chief because he should play no role in promoting products his agency regulates.
He is also one of the doctors who lies about vaccine dangers.
The Nazi-built Holtzbrinck Publishing Group systematically scrubs any paper that casts vaccines in a negative light. Look at the case of a 2016 animal study of HPV vaccine from Japan.
In the case of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, an unexpectedly novel disease entity, HPV vaccination associated neuro-immunopathetic syndrome (HANS), has been reported and remains to be carefully verified. To elucidate the mechanism of HANS, we applied a strategy similar to the active experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE) model – one of the most popular animal models used to induce maximum immunological change in the central nervous system.
The study never said its objective was to “determine neurological damage from HPV vaccine alone,” but to “elucidate the mechanism of HANS [novel disease entity, HPV vaccination associated neuro-immunopathetic syndrome].” This retraction totally lied about the study’s objectives; no wonder the authors don’t agree with it!
Holtzbrinck also owns Frontiers. When the first vaccinated versus unvaccinated study of autism was accepted for publication by Frontiers in Public Health, the vaccine troll army responded. Frontiers took down the study abstract and cancelled publication explicitly in response to vaccine crybabies on the internet.
The study was since published elsewhere, but there is an ongoing theme. Whether it’s the HPV vaccine, the MMR vaccine, or vaccinations in general, Holtzbrinck censors vaccine risk papers. Avoid publishing in its journals like the plague.
Paul Offit has written a post for The Daily Beast arguing that a CDC study of miscarriage and influenza vaccination should have never been published. He bases his argument on his own misrepresentations of the study’s results. Read Autism Investigated’s below letter to The Daily Beast’s editorial team demanding they retract Offit’s post.
Your contributor Paul Offit’s latest article “The Pregnancy Vaccine Scare That Should Have Never Been” makes multiple misrepresentations of a recent CDC study on influenza vaccination and miscarriage. Since these misrepresentations form the basis of his central argument that the study should never have been published, Offit’s article is fatally flawed and should be retracted by your publication.
As someone who holds a degree in epidemiology (unlike Offit) and has analyzed the database used in this study (also unlike Offit), I can assure you that that is a significant association. The “95% CI” (confidence interval) excludes the number 1.0. Therefore, the answer to their study question would point in the “yes” direction.
“After the CDC researchers had finished sub-stratifying their data, the numbers were small”, concluding the results due to “the curse of small numbers gleaned from a large database.” But even before the authors had computed their next association from a smaller sample, the association from their full study sample was already significant. But because Offit misrepresented the association as being insignificant, his point about the study’s findings being based solely on small numbers is also wrong.
Because the majority of Offit’s points are based on his own misrepresentations – including all those that discussed the study findings directly – simple corrections are too mild. The entire post should be retracted by The Daily Beast, especially since the purpose of the post was to make the case for why the study should have never been published. In reality, The Daily Beast should have never posted this fatally flawed article by Paul Offit and should now retract it.