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March 20, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
57:44
Selective Hearing - the real story of Brian Deer and the GMC
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Time Text
The End The End "And they are gonna give some specifics" They wanna play a very soort bus "Aug hits Defense," "I'm gonna catch pack up with another student"
"Thank you!" "Thank you!"
"Thank you!" "Thank you!" "Thank you!" "Thank you!" "Thank you!" "Thank you!" "Thank you!" "Thank you!" "Thank you!"
"Thank you!" "Thank you!" "Come on, come on!" "No regrets!" "No regrets!" "No regrets!" "Thank you!" "Wakefield, Murch and Walker Smith have never said that MMR causes all autism" "or that MMR is solely responsible for the rise in autism cases seen here in the UK in recent years" It is within national broadcasting and broadsheet journalism where these claims have been made.
In their 1998 Lancet paper, Wakefield, Murch and Walker-Smith wrote, We have identified a chronic enterocolitis in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction.
In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps and rubella immunisation.
Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine.
Then, in a press conference at University College London in February 1998, soon after the release of the Lancet paper, Wakefield recommended that parents choose single measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations for their children until further investigations had been undertaken.
Six months later...
The Department of Health withdrew the single measles vaccine.
In September of 1998, they stopped it being available, despite the fact that their supposed concern was that parents would not be vaccinating their children.
So there are parents who are genuinely concerned about the safety of MMR vaccination, and the option of using the single vaccine was taken away from them.
I mean, it's just...
I would have thought it's an abuse of individual rights.
As evidence at the GMC hearings has been presented, the parents of the Lancet 12 children have become increasingly concerned that their voices have not been heard.
We're writing to you as parents of the children who, because of their symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease and associated autism, were seen at the Royal Free Hospital Paediatric Gastroenterology Unit by Professor Walker Smith and Dr Simon Murch with the involvement of Dr Andrew Wakefield on the research side of their investigations.
Our children became the subjects of a paper published in the Lancet in 1998.
We know these three doctors are being investigated by the General Medical Council, the GMC, on the basis of allegations made to them by a freelance reporter.
Among the many allegations made are the suggestions that the doctors acted inappropriately regarding our children, that Dr Wakefield solicited them for research purposes, and that our children had not been referred in the usual way by their own GPs.
It's also claimed that our children were given unnecessary and invasive investigations for the purpose of research and not in their interest.
We know that this was not so.
All of our children were referred to Professor Walkersmith in the proper way in order that their severe, long-standing and distressing gastroenterological symptoms could be fully investigated and treated by the foremost paediatric gastroenterologists in the UK. Many of us had been to several other doctors in our quest to get help for our children, but not until we saw Professor Walker Smith and his colleagues were full investigations undertaken.
We were all treated with utmost professionalism and respect by all three of these doctors.
Throughout our children's care at the Royal Free Hospital, we were kept fully informed about the investigations recommended and the treatment plans which evolved.
All of the investigations were carried out without distress to our children, many of whom made great improvements on treatment so that for the first time in years they were finally pain free.
We've been following the GMC hearings with distress as we, the parents, have had no opportunity to refute the allegations.
For the most part, we've been excluded from giving evidence to support these doctors, whom we all hold in very high regard.
It's for this reason that we're writing to the GMC and to all concerned to be absolutely clear that the complaint that is being brought against these three caring and compassionate physicians does not in any way reflect our perception of the treatment offered to our sick children at the Royal Free.
We are appalled that these doctors have been the subject of this protracted inquiry in the absence of any complaint from any parent about any of the children who were reported in the Lancet paper.
So why are Wakefield, Murch and Walker Smith being investigated at the GMC? You know, the first we heard from the GMC was that they said a number of charges, a number of complaints have been made against you.
And of course the whole basis of the early correspondence with them was this complaint from Brian Deere, which was kind of, it was almost exactly what he'd written in the Sunday Times and accompanied by this something like 300 pages that they've downloaded from his website.
So how credible is Brian Deer to be taken so seriously by the GMC?
Let's meet him and find out.
Oh, I don't know.
You don't know what it means?
What about our kids, Brian?
What about our kids?
Can you explain why they've all got bowel disorders?
No, I can't.
They haven't all got bowel disorders.
All what kids?
70%.
70% of what?
70% of our autistic kids.
Hang on.
You're saying that 70% of autistic children have bowel disease?
70% of our children.
Who's ours?
Parents.
So 70% of parents here today, their children have bowel disease.
Well, why couldn't Wakefield find any children with bowel disease?
They also have seizures.
They didn't have bowel disease.
They also have behavioural problems.
They didn't have bowel disease.
The fact that Brian Deer said that the children at Andy Wakefield's study didn't have any bowel disease is unbelievable.
He hasn't lived with these children.
He wasn't there in the theatres, which I was, when my son had his investigations.
He didn't see the actual evidence there at the time, which I did, that they do have bowel disease.
Physically, I've seen You know, on a screen from the colonoscopy that he's got bowel disease and living with him.
I know he's got bowel disease.
I know what bowel disease is.
He's got pain.
He's got the diarrhoea.
He's got all the problems that are associated with that.
Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, supported Wakefield's findings on the 19th of April 2006 when he wrote in The Lancet, the essential clinical findings remain unchallenged as far as their accuracy is concerned.
More importantly, he reiterated this statement in his evidence at the GMC hearings on the 8th of August 2007.
They didn't have bowel disease.
They also didn't have bowel disease.
They didn't have bowel disease.
Have you been in the hearing?
I've sat through 12 weeks.
Brian Deer holds no water as far as I'm concerned.
He doesn't live with what I live with.
I have an autistic son who has no speech and he's still in nappies and he's 11.
He changed after his MMR. I saw it with my own eyes.
I know what I live with.
My son eats his own faeces.
I get faced with Pooh Monster quite regularly.
I have done in my past.
I feed him.
I dress him.
He cannot ask for a drink of water.
He has no idea how to function in our world.
Brian Deary is a journalist with no children.
I can't get to Asda with my autistic son.
He does not know what life is like to parents who have to live every day and don't get the privilege of forgetting what autism can do and what the MMR can do to a child.
And he can't blow bubbles.
He can't drink out of a straw.
How is he ever going to function in life?
He's not able to do some of the very simplest things.
You can put it away?
No?
Okay.
Shall we sit down, John?
Who is this?
John?
Who's that?
John.
John. John. John. John.
Jonathan!
Jonathan.
Jonathan Edwards.
Good boy!
So Brian is free to attend the GMC every day.
It's hard not to ask how he can afford to do this, especially as the Sunday Times and Channel 4 have both confirmed they are not paying him to attend the hearings.
Well, I don't know if you want to talk to me about your case.
This is bowel disease, Brian.
This is what it looks like.
No, that's an x-ray.
That's an impacted bowel.
Oh, an impacted bowel is not bowel disease.
That's constipation.
Oh, the diagnosis is bowel disease.
Whose diagnosis?
That is not bowel disease.
From who?
From who?
Look at that picture, Brian.
Look at that boy's bell.
That is not bowel disease.
That's not bowel disease.
This is the photo of Josh Edwards that was shown to Brian.
You know, my son's had his large bowel removed.
That can't just be down to diarrhoea.
Does he really think that the specialist will remove his barrel for no reason?
Josh was a normal healthy baby, up to the age of 13 months.
Very happy, good sleeper, You know, everybody would comment on, you know, how good looking he was, happy and contented.
He had his MMR at 13 months and he got a reaction immediately.
He had severe diarrhoea the very next day.
I went in to get him up and his cot was covered, all through his paper grow, all onto his sheets, bright yellow.
This lasted for five days.
Once the diary stopped, he then would only open his bowel once a week.
And he seemed to change.
Completely different child.
Still, I was being told that there was no connection with the MMR. So at three years, nine months, I then went ahead and gave them the MMR booster and the same thing happened again.
It was at this stage at a school medical that the doctor said to me, any problems?
I said, well, yeah, you can't tell me opening your bowel twice a month is normal.
He said, because it's not.
Look at the size of his distended stomach.
With that, he faxed a report through to our local hospital and Josh had appointment the following day.
It was then suggested that he had manual evacuations under anaesthetic and an anal stretch to stretch his anus.
No, it made no difference whatsoever.
He was then referred to Great Ormond Street and then later on to the Royal Free with the Emma Martin research going on there.
Within 10 days of being seen at the Royal Free they had him in and found that yes he had exactly what they were finding in other autistic children, inflammation and ulceration.
And he had an ileostomate where they removed a whole lot.
It was in Josh's best interest.
It was so badly diseased that he would be better off without his colon, his large bowel.
So we were forced to take Josh over to the States, where this endoscopy capsule travels.
He swallows, travels through his body, taking loads of pictures, and it proved we were right.
The bowel disease was in the small intestine.
You know, it's definitely not Crohn's disease, and it's not colitis.
It is a new form of bowel disease, which does exist.
Nobody has even considered that it could possibly be MMR damage, and it could be the measles, what is still in him, and doing the damage.
Why on earth can't they test for measles virus?
They don't want to know.
They won't even consider it.
Why?
You know, why on earth can't they?
Because they're frightened that Dr.
to Whitefield possibly made a connection.
In February 2009, Heather Edwards wrote to Brian Deere via email.
This is what she said.
This is the child you were shown a photo of outside the GMC, in which you replied by saying that he did not have bowel disease but nothing more than diarrhea.
How could you possibly be able to diagnose bowel disease from a photo?
If you had looked properly at it, you would have seen he has an ileostomy bag.
Do you really think gastroenterologists and surgeons would have removed his entire colon on the grounds of nothing more than diarrhoea?
And Deer responded with this.
Dear Nick and Heather Edwards, Normally I don't reply to malicious emails.
In your case, I will make an exception.
I have never passed any comment about this child of any kind at any time.
I have never diagnosed or sought to diagnose any illness in any child ever.
Period.
Period.
What mental contortion on your own part leads you to imagine that I ever did such a thing is beyond me.
At all times outside the GMC, I have been videotaped.
None of that videotape has ever been shown because it reveals me discussing and debating issues with people who raised them with me, to my undoubted credit.
Radio 4 even broadcasts a section of these conversations.
If you personally cannot behave with integrity, courtesy and honesty, you really shouldn't be surprised if others take advantage of you, as it appears to me that they have.
I will have to assume that you don't know any better, so you have my best wishes.
You should look at what the government is saying.
You see, what you do is you spread around these stories and you mislead other parents and actually victimise them.
You're actually victimising the parents of children who don't need to be victimised.
You should try and get the actual American government's face on this and not spread these out.
This is the US government's statement on November the 9th, 2007.
In sum, DVIC has concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations child received on July 19, 2000 significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy, With features of autism spectrum disorder.
Therefore, respondent recommends that compensation be awarded to petitioners in accordance with 42 U.S.C. In this country, I think that complacency where we were at before still reigns here.
I think people in the media and people in the government and public health feel like this issue has been settled.
That this debate is over.
That there is zero evidence to link vaccines with autism.
But they're not paying attention.
And it's disappointing that the media was not interested in what I had to say.
I don't know what role, if any, the government played in that.
But I will say this.
The British government ignores what's happening in the United States at its own peril.
What you're involved in is just a festival of fabrication.
A bit like that even now, you know?
Well, no, perhaps if you come and listen to the hearings and hear the evidence, you know.
Yeah, you know the evidence.
But you see, your ears are closed, don't they?
Brian, do you realise you've staked your professional reputation on what the GMC decides?
Isn't that a bit of a risk?
No.
Let me ask you this question.
If the General Medical Council approaches a journalist and says, you've published this material, would you supply us with any evidence you've got, any documents you have, any material?
Let me ask you the question.
Does that journalist have a responsibility, a public duty, to give them that material or not?
And I did.
So have I done something wrong?
This is a letter that Deer wrote to the GMC on February 25th, 2004, just three days after his article for 2004, just three days after his article for the Sunday Times entitled MMR Research Scandal.
Following an extensive inquiry for the Sunday Times into the origins of the public panic over MMR, I write to ask your permission to lay before you an outline of evidence that you may consider worthy of evaluation with respect of the possibility of serious professional misconduct on the part of the above-named registered medical practitioners.
Do these words sound like an approach to the GMC or a response?
The GMC or a response?
What's all this abuse?
Posters being held up abusing me?
Threats to me?
So where's my duty if the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom comes to a journalist and says, you have supplied...
Well, so you're saying that it was my public duty to supply my findings on request from the GMC to them.
So why are these groups then publishing these outrageous lies about me, saying that I'm working for the drug industry, who's paying you?
There was some placard out here today saying something about who's pulling your strings or something, and all this kind of stuff.
There's some...
Dribbling idiot you've got with your guy called Walker.
An absolute dribbling idiot.
Publishing materials suggesting that I'm in a conspiracy with the government and the dragon.
He's lost his family.
I'm not interested in that.
Why an award-winning journalist would want to resort to name-calling is anyone's guess.
But the investigative writing of Martin Walker does raise questions about Brian's independence.
In the Sunday Times during 1989, Deere wrote a number of articles about the failings of AZT, the anti-HIV and AIDS drug developed by the Wellcome Foundation.
At that time, Wellcome was best known for their antivirals and vaccines.
The Wellcome Foundation defended AZT and mercilessly lobbied the Sunday Times.
Consequently, in 1991, Deere went to work in the USA. In 1994, he returned to London and produced an accessible information-packed guide to the Wellcome Empire that ran in two editions of the Sunday Times.
It detailed the company's history and future and was clearly written with the involvement of Wellcome.
In the feature, Deer waged a seemingly undisputed campaign against Wellcome's antibacterial drug, Sceptrin.
But he was on safe ground.
The drug was already on its way out with the agreement of Wellcome, having caused massive damage to thousands around the world.
In his victory over Wellcome, Deer cultivated two community campaigns.
But when Wellcome conceded, changing only the prescription terms for the drug, he distanced himself from the campaigns and their demands.
No victim of Septrim received any compensation for their injuries.
In 1988, three years after his Wellcome features, Deer produced the first of a number of pro-Wellcome vaccine articles in the Sunday Times.
At this time, Wellcome was the main producer of vaccines in Britain.
The articles criticised both parents and medical experts who had spoken out against whooping cough vaccine.
On the issue of vaccines at least, Deer appeared to be firmly on the side of the pharmaceutical companies and the government.
Reinforcing the vaccination strategy and casting doubts over the evidence of claimants.
The first article for instance was about Margaret Best who was awarded 2.75 million plus costs on behalf of her son Kenneth who had suffered brain damage after receiving the vaccine for whooping cough.
Despite the fact that Best was the only claimant ever to win damages in a British court against a pharmaceutical company Dear intimated the judge had been hoodwinked by the claimant.
Following more pro-vaccine articles involving parents and campaigners, Dear authored a front-page article entitled MMR Research Scandal for the Sunday Times in February 2004.
The following month, in the internet newsletter of medical legal investigations, an article entitled MMR and MLI, MMR Sunday Times Investigation, says...
The extraordinary tale of the problems found in the paper by Dr.
Andrew Wakefield, as published in The Lancet, concerning MMR and autism, was shared with MLI in strict confidence, whilst Brian Deer's fine piece of investigative journalism was underway.
We were asked to advise on matters that were clearly quite alarming.
So who are medical legal investigations?
Medical Legal Investigations is a commercial organisation working mainly for pharmaceutical companies who suspect fraud in their trials.
It is almost completely funded by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry which has an agreed representation on its board.
In his MMR research scandal report, Deer makes no reference to Medical Legal Investigations.
For both the Sunday Times report and a dispatches programme for Channel 4, Deer visited the homes of several parents and was reluctant to reveal the whole truth with them.
His name was Brian Lawrence.
The man who came to interview me called me and told me his name was Brian Lawrence and it was not until a few days later after the interview that I discovered his true identity.
The interview was very distressing and very odd, and I immediately wrote a letter and put in a complaint to the Sunday Times.
Curiously enough, the next morning, he emailed me and said, I'm sorry I gave you a hard time in the interview, but I'm on your side as parents, really.
She's very, very strange.
But the Sunday Times never gave me a satisfactory reply.
One of the complaints that I had was, why did this man come to my house using a false name?
The only reply that I had was by phone.
And it was...
The managing editor who dismissively said to me, oh, Brian Deer uses his middle name when he talks to drug companies so they don't know who he is.
I said, but I'm not a drug company, I'm a parent.
And there was no response, there was no cogent answer.
He actually, you know, all very interesting, he used his middle name so he didn't really give a false name because it was his name.
He's very good at that.
He insisted that he wanted to help her and obtain financial help, extra financial help from the government and that it would cost the government a whole lot more if they had to look after the children, you know, in care etc.
He also promised us that he would do his best to obtain help for Jodie who was constantly sick Was not sleeping, had lost a tremendous amount of weight, and he felt that he could, through his media, obtain help for her to try to stop this.
So, under those circumstances, we agreed for him to come down.
He came up to film and everything for about three days, and To try and get some help for Jodie to get a doctor to look at her properly.
That's what it was all about, really.
And parents are not getting the help that they should do and that.
So, at the end of the day, we'd done this filming about Jodie and that.
Went into New Forest and went to Shirley.
She was sick and I wanted to change her, take her back.
And I didn't have nothing to change her.
She was really sick.
She was in her hair and that.
And it was down on the floor and he said, let her sit and play in it.
Don't, you know, let her sit and play in it.
I said, no, she's coming home to get changed and you sit and play in it, I said.
And I took her back to get changed and that.
We did actually show him paperwork of Jodie for what happened to her, the proof of what happened to her, and he looked at it and he said, yes, I've seen it, it's there.
But at the end of the day, he said that it wasn't true for what happened to Jodie and that, and I don't believe one little bit of the information you've got.
Jodie Marchant was 14 and a half months old when she was given seven vaccines in one visit, three of them in the MMR. The other four, however, DTP and polio, were given without the consent of her parents.
And she's never going to have a normal life, go out to work and that, I never think, and have a normal life.
She's always going to have care 24-7 and that.
So that's, you know, that's what happened to Jodie.
I just don't know why it happened.
I'd love to ask the doctor why she'd done it.
Jodie was given the extra four vaccinations without the consent of her parents at the practice of Dr Alison Hill.
The merchants made a complaint to the GMC about her in 2002, but she has never been called to the GMC and continues to practice.
How is it that one complaint about a doctor who authorises four vaccinations without the parent's consent is ignored by the GMC, while one complaint from Brian Deer results in one doctor and two professors being called before the GMC, even though parents have no complaints against them?
I don't think there is a conspiracy.
I don't think there is a cover-up.
Well, why are you involved with this cry-shame organisation?
They're publishing these outrageous lies that there's a conspiracy and I'm being paid by drug companies to fabricate evidence with the government and God knows what else.
Well, then you should get on to these people and say, why are you publishing this stuff?
I'm more concerned to get to the truth as to what's happened to the children like myself.
Well, then you should come to the hearings and hear.
Are you interested about the children?
1 in 100, Brian!
Do you care about 1 in 100?
Do you care about 1 in 100?
They did not that Well it says it's actually outrageous As a parent, and I know that other parents have come to me with the same story, and certainly parents of children who were involved in the Lancet paper as well, I, my husband, my family, saw our own son desperately ill,
with diarrhoea up to ten times a day for many, many years.
And it was only until...
We got involved with, actually, we managed to get some gut bacteria from my son, but that actually was a research trial at another hospital, and that gave him a little bit of relief, but what it didn't do was deal with the underlying problems.
When my son went into the Rule 3, when he was finally scoped, then the reasons behind Not just the pain, but he would suddenly become emaciated.
He became very, very ill.
Physically very, very ill.
And all that came to light.
So, not got any bowel disease?
Well, I mean...
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
You know, is he a trained gastroenterologist?
Is he a trained doctor?
What is he talking about?
It's just an outrageous claim.
Ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask Isabella Thomas, is she here?
Is Isabella here?
Ask Mrs Thomas whether her two children have got regressive autism.
but ask her whether they've got inflammatory bowel disease.
Somehow, Brian obtained some medical notes and the names of the Lancet 12 children.
He published them on his website in 2006.
One of the children included on Deer's website was the son of Isabella Thomas.
She is pursuing legal action against Brian and therefore did not want to provide a response in this film.
But this is what she said on the opening day of the hearing in 2007.
And the form of autism, you know, they keep saying autism, but what our children have is the virus inside them.
They've got the vaccine strain virus Mitu in the damaged tissue in their bowel.
They've got it in their bloodstream.
And interestingly enough, when they checked Michael's bloodstream first, it was negative.
Then Michael started to have attacks because they keep having attacks of this virus in their system and he had a very bad attack.
They checked his blood again and it was in there in high levels.
So they should actually be researching what is happening, what this virus is doing to their system and that is not happening.
Now with the very bad attack he had, he had memory loss, hallucinations, The most severe headaches where he, travelling along in a car, he tried to open the door to get out to escape the pain, collapsing at school.
His school that he was at before the senior one wrote a letter to whom it may concern for the medical profession to say this is outrageous, this child is sick and he's getting no treatment.
I've spoken to doctors And they have said to me, we believe your children are damaged as well as others, but we've either got a mortgage to pay or we cannot do it because we will be struck off like Andrew Wakefield.
Instead, it was us parents who said there's a connection between the vaccine.
We saw it.
We were there.
And grandparents, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, we were all there.
We saw what happened.
And yet, all Andrew Wakefield did As a doctor would, is say, this is what the parents are saying.
This is extremely concerning and it needs to be investigated.
And bring back the single vaccines and start doing the research.
And guess what?
That was it.
No way.
So if he hadn't mentioned the MMR vaccine, I can guarantee you there's no way that man would be in there.
At all.
And again, I would say the children would have had treatment, but because they're MMR damaged, they are blacklisted.
I've gone into a doctor's surgery with my son, extremely ill.
He looked at me, not my son, and he said, I don't want politics brought into this surgery.
Another time where my son had collapsed because he nearly died of having, his body went into shock.
I phoned the surgery.
They said, oh yes, one of Andrew Wakefield's children.
Not, you know, he's not, he's my son.
And they didn't come out.
They ignored him.
Give him cowpaw.
I phoned the hospital.
Give him cowpaw.
And the child then started to become unconscious.
Called an ambulance.
He was rushed into hospital.
And literally, they had to save his life.
And do you know what?
When I went in there, all around, my son were doctors and nurses.
And I looked at them and I thought, my God, you know, I was so angry because now he's nearly dying and you want to do something.
And I was angry with them, and I said to them, this is ridiculous, and he was going jaundice in colour at this time.
And the doctor said, Mrs.
Thomas were treating the emergency only.
So he was not interested in having any follow-ups or finding out why my son nearly died.
Asuka!
No, well, let's just deal with that.
I'm not going to get involved in ten years of...
I think you've focused on the wrong issue.
You've focused on the 1998 paper.
I gave the GMC the findings that I had at the time.
Now, what about the evidence that's emerged since?
Well, that's the definition.
The evidence since 1998 has resulted in the general acceptance that children with autism are at a higher risk for gastrointestinal problems than non-autistic children.
It has been written into the NHS framework for child health that children with autism are likely to require gastrointestinal evaluation.
It was the three at the GMC and the team at the Royal Free Hospital that first drew attention to this.
I'm not here to be back.
Find something that I've published saying that MMR does or doesn't cause autism.
Have you found anything I've published saying whether or not MMR does or doesn't cause autism?
Perhaps a more appropriate question is, can Brian or anyone else find anything published by Wakefield, Walkersmith or Merch that says MMR does or does not cause autism?
I'm interested in people who fight everything. - I think she's standing.
You're a journalist.
I do my job.
As a good journalist, you presumably want to report the Hannah Polin case.
What about the Hannah Polin case?
Mitochondrial injury.
Mitochondrial inherited disease.
Leading to autistic-like symptoms.
Autistic-like symptoms followed.
With nine vaccines leading to fever.
How do you know that children like...
That's not a question.
The American government has stated absolutely explicitly...
I'm not arguing for the American government.
They have stated absolutely explicitly...
But how do you know my son isn't like Hanapoli?
Well, I don't.
Well, that's right.
That's why I'm here.
So are you one of those people who thinks that the American Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Medicine, and all the pediatricians in the world are all involved in a conspiracy to cover up alleged horrific injuries to children?
I don't think you need a conspiracy.
This is amazing.
That's all they do is a conspiracy.
What has happened is that nobody has independently funded the research to uncover what has happened to our children.
Are you saying that the Department of Health, there are doctors there who knowingly are concealing that MMR causes horrific injuries to children?
Yes!
So we've got children to prove it!
Why do we do that?
Why would they do that?
Dr Peter Fletcher worked for the Department of Health for around 10 years in the 1970s and early 1980s.
He played a senior role at the heart of the British government's public health policy.
As Chief Medical Assessor and later Chief Scientific Officer, he was responsible for vaccine safety.
Dr Fletcher has stated publicly that the refusal by government to evaluate the risks of MMR properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history.
There are very powerful people in positions of great authority who have staked their reputations on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves.
Our children, don't you bow about the one in one in the shelter?
Let's go back and say, they might do that because they would argue that the good of the majority that are the immunity arguing justifies...
The British government published the evidence that the urabe vaccine the mumps component of the urabe vaccine was causing mumps meningitis.
We've published it.
It's government scientists.
It didn't work.
In Nottingham.
They knew that evidence before they introduced it to the problems in Canada and they didn't investigate it.
Well, let's not go into that whole thing.
Well, who brought you that?
Well, we can do your Arbe if you want, but I have to go and do your Arbe because it's a historical matter.
- Good night, did we wait? - The comment was made by Brian Deer that the Urabi problems with the two early brands of MMR was a historical matter.
It's fatuous really, because in that case some of the children's damage is a historical matter.
What we're dealing with here is two things.
A, a history of And B, the specifics of the Urabi problem.
The interesting thing about the Urabi problem was that the warning signs had already been noticed in Canada and there were already concerns about the Urabi strain of vaccine but the Department of Health pressed ahead regardless anyway and then had to withdraw them apparently at 24 hours notice four years after they were introduced because of the link with meningitis.
Now, what does this tell us?
Well, first of all, it tells us that vaccines sometimes are wrong and faulty.
The Department of Health doesn't like to talk about the Urabi episode, but it's an example where they found there was a problem, and they're very proud of the fact they acted on it.
But it does demonstrate that they licensed a dangerous vaccine which damaged some children and had to be withdrawn in a panic.
So that tells us something.
The second thing it tells us is about Brian Deere.
Brian Deere doesn't want to hear about it.
Why not?
Why on earth not?
Some of the children that are damaged were damaged by those particular vaccines.
What's he saying?
Is he saying that anything to do with the Urabi strain isn't anything to do with the wider MMR problem?
That's ridiculous.
That's an arbitrary decision.
who is here to make up the rules?
Despite speculation that the UK government secretly indemnified the company who produced the Urabi containing vaccine against damage costs, responsibility for possible MMR vaccine damage has been evaded. responsibility for possible MMR vaccine damage has been evaded.
"It's good." Should it be discovered that the Urabi-containing MMR vaccine did cause damage to any children, including those cited in the Lancet paper, then, if the government did underwrite any of the vaccines, it will be the British government and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, JCVI, that will be held responsible.
It could be in the interest of the JCVI and the British government that Dr Wakefield and Professors Merchant Walker-Smith are found guilty.
They made him a...
It shows they made him a shame and they were later prepared to acknowledge...
All we're trying to do here is to get sufficient momentum behind us to properly investigate what happened to our children.
Well, haven't they been investigated?
There were 1,600 children!
It's not clinical investigation!
What do you think they were doing?
It's what they've been doing here!
They did!
Ileocolonoscopies, lumbar punctures, MRI scans, they did!
No, they've got, they've got that idea!
They've got 1,600 children!
Not all 1,600, that's right, but enough of them!
How many do you read that?
But they dismissed most of them without proper explanation.
When you actually read the detail, you would have never decided that.
As you must know, as you must know, that for almost anybody, autistic children are among the most investigated patients.
If you think of clinical research as being rather like a police investigation using DNA, whereas if you think of epidemiological research rather like the old Mr. Piazza, Plod type of identity parade of ten men wearing a hat, it's that different.
The science is that different.
And unfortunately the Department of Health and its followers, and Dr.
Brian Deer is seemingly one of its followers, Seem to prefer the old-fashioned method of the ten men standing up all wearing the same hat as a form of investigation.
It's not very scientific and unfortunately they're not looking at the individual children, they're not looking at the details of the damage and they're not on the trail in terms of investigation.
What we need here is a Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass or something rather better still What we have is more of a PR machine which seems simply determined to try and smother the parents, brush aside their concerns and to protect, above all else, to protect the reputation of the immunisation programme.
How many specialists has he seen?
How many specialists?
Three or four.
Well, three or four.
How many GPs?
They didn't know what they were talking about.
They thought he was fragile.
So what you're saying is that he was investigating, but...
Not properly.
It's not properly.
It's not properly.
That is what clinical means.
That's what clinical means.
The problem is that we can't get people in this country to clinically investigate and do cupboards.
- Well, that's what we're doing. - Finish it last. - Brian Deer, when he was arguing with me on the street in Houston Road in May 2008, was perhaps misunderstanding me.
I was saying that we can't get doctors to do clinical investigations, and Brian Deer was saying, but that's what these doctors were doing, referring to the three doctors before the GMC. But he again still seems to be stuck in 1998.
What I was saying was that in 2008, you cannot get doctors to do clinical investigations into regressive autism because doctors are clearly frightened as to where it's going to land them.
Part of the purpose, I think, of dragging the three doctors before the GMC is to send out a clear message to the medical establishment that if you question the safety of vaccinations, this is where you will end up, in front of the GMC. I think any...
Claim that I'm just looking for the answers that suit me.
I can just immediately repudiate.
I don't actually care what has caused my son's damage per se.
If my son's damage has been caused by...
Walking on the cracks in the paving stones or listening to the Beatles too much or eating cornflakes, I'm quite prepared to accept that that is the cause of it.
I just want to go where the clues lead me, where the science leads me.
I have no predisposed agenda for or against vaccination For or against the pharmaceuticals industry, for or against the Department of Health or the Committee on Safety and Medicines, I don't have an agenda of my own.
I simply want to go where the facts take me.
And as far as I'm concerned, the facts have taken me towards there being a link between Oliver's vaccination and his autism.
It's completely and wholly unjustified for somebody to tell me that I'm just looking for the answer that suits my prejudices.
I think that's just plain wrong.
What's Autistic Enterocolitis?
What's Autistic?
Well, we don't know, do we?
Well, we do, but we know what Wakeman says it is.
What does Wakeman say it is?
Well, we'll be here all the day if I say what Wakeman says it is.
What does he say it is?
Well, he believes that there is an interaction between the regression...
No, what is Enterocolitis?
Enterocolitis?
I'll remind you!
I'll remind you!
I'll remind you what it is.
Brian, Richard Mills from his head, Chelsea.
I'll remind you what it is.
I'll remind you what it is.
Let's just write what bowel disease looks like.
What does the word mean?
What does the word mean?
And this is the problem.
You don't even understand the absolute face of fire.
Even David O'Rourke, who has published massive, huge documents that have been republished all over and taken a painting, doesn't even know what enterocallitis is.
Yes, that's because you have lied.
I wish I was a reporter as well.
We're talking about a new condition of inflammation.
I've never set myself up as a medical expert.
Well, you have.
You have.
You've been publishing letters in the Lancet.
When you go home, get onto Google, look up the meaning of the word 'enterocleritis'.
You have used this expression again and again and again and held yourself out to parents who are...
You look at your body language.
Look at the way you're grabbing your finger at me.
It's surrounded by people you're being abusive about.
But you're being abusive to me.
I asked you.
Look at the way you're pointing at me.
I'm not going like this to you.
Well, I'm only imitating you.
I'm not going like this to you.
It's back to front.
It's a witch-up.
Right, yeah.
Neither of us are experts in it.
What more can one say?
I have an understanding of it insofar as what I've read about it.
But my background as a professional is as a public transport planner.
I'm not a medic and I don't profess to be one.
I've never set up myself as an authority in it.
All I have done is compress what I have read into briefings which I have then made available to people.
Autistic Enterocolitis is potentially a new form of inflammatory bowel disease.
This particular bowel disease has been confirmed in children by several other authors.
But there is some debate about whether other children have this form of bowel disease or whether it is specific to children with autism.
Richard Mills, Richard Mills, he died, who's the head of Research Officer.
He's on Radio 4 recently and said he acknowledged that children with autism have got bowel disorders.
Do you not think he is?
I don't know who he is, I've never heard of him.
Well, he's like the head of Research Officer in the UK, so he is...
Richard Mills is Director of Research at the National Autistic Society and has been Honorary Secretary and Director of Research Autism since 2004.
Research Autism is a major charity focusing on research for interventions in autism.
They are supported by the University of Cambridge Autism Research Centre and the National Autistic Society.
What are you doing here, Brian?
I don't know what I'm doing.
What are you finding?
Because you can never evaluate anything Wakefield has done.
But you have heard that.
I didn't understand Brian's final comment against the racket of the Euston Road traffic as to saying you should evaluate what Wakefield has done more.
My view of Dr Wakefield is that he has done some very original and very valuable pioneering research which has taken him into some very controversial areas.
But he has nevertheless always put the health of the children first.
I have a very high regard for that.
I think he is a person to look up to.
He's a model to us all in terms of Being logical and searching for facts and searching for answers and keeping on looking no matter how dangerous the waters become.
His views as expressed at the press conference were based on a very, very detailed analysis.
He'd done of the safety trials around the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, and that had led him to be really concerned that it was, in a small proportion, and let's be quite clear on that, no-one has ever said, A, no-one's ever said don't vaccinate, and B, no-one has ever said that MMR vaccination causes all autism.
People should be resented with the facts, and then they can make an informed judgement.
If they think that the benefits outweigh the risks, as individual parents, they can choose for their children.
They need advice to make that decision, but they need completely unbiased advice.
They need independent advice.
Now, the unfortunate thing about the MMR controversy is the advice they get is from the very people who've messed this whole thing up.
They get their advice from the Department of Health who get their advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation who are running the vaccination programme.
It's hardly a non-partisan viewpoint.
Or from the Committee on Safety of Medicines who are the very people who licensed the vaccine in the first place and didn't properly ensure that it was adequately safety tested.
So both of those sources of advice Are, as far as I'm concerned, biased and have a vested interest in, not in concealing the truth, but perhaps, shall we say, not turning over any stones, not actually searching out for any problems.
There hasn't been a cover-up.
What there has been is a conspiracy not to uncover, which is subtly different.
But it has the same end effect, which is basically smother the parents' stories and try and walk on and ignore what the parents have said as to what happened to their children.
What would I say to a member of the public who asked me what is going on?
I would say I'm as puzzled as they are, because all my husband has ever tried to do is investigate the possibility that the combined measles, mumps, rubella vaccination might, in a small proportion of children, I don't see...
I simply don't see the problem with that.
And nor do the parents of those children who were investigated at the Royal Free.
and there were many many many of them not just the Lancet 12
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