Andrew J. Wakefield - Waging War on the Autistic Child: The Arizona 5 and the Legacy of Baron von Munchausen

Copyright 2012 by Andrew J. Wakefield

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wakefield, Andrew J.

Waging war on the autistic child : the Arizona 5 and the legacy of Baron von Munchausen / Andrew J. Wakefield.

p. ; cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61608-614-5 (alk. paper)

I. Title.

[DNLM: 1. Autistic Disorder--Arizona--Legal Cases. 2. Child--Arizona. 3. Health Policy--Arizona--Legal Cases. 4. Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine--adverse effects--Arizona--Legal Cases. 5. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy--Arizona--Legal Cases. WS 32 AA7]

LC classification not assigned

362.19885882009791--dc23

2012006754

Printed in the United States of America

T his book is dedicated to fellow travelers, including John Walker-Smith, Arthur Krigsman, Lenny Gonzalez, Federico Balzola, and all those who have come to realize that the bowel bones connected to the brain bone.
You were right.

W hat is the loss of job, career, professional license, honors, colleagues, and country against that of a childs voice? How do the very public denigration of ones science and the epithet of child killer from Bill Gates weigh against the intractable pain of intestinal inflammation? For me the answer lies in the fact that, whereas the former are mostly artifactcontrivancethe latter are symptoms of a ruthless disease. The former are self-serving, vulnerable to political expedients and the vain whims of respectability. On the other hand, chronic pain that is denied a cry for help can drag a child into Hell and keep him there.

As an academic gastroenterologist, I have now been researching the complex and intriguing interaction among bowels, immune system, and brain for seventeen years. For much of that time, the scientific process has been derailed by vested interests acting not on behalf of affected children, but rather for the protection of vaccine manufacturers and incompetent governments. Despite this, the evidencereviewed in this bookis overwhelmingly in favor of a major gastrointestinal contribution to autism. Over fifteen years ago, I proposed that for many children with autism, their disease might actually start in the intestine; the current science leads me to believe this now more than ever before.

I sometimes ask myself whether if this had just been one child one Lorenzo or even a handful of damaged children, would I have had the temerity, the arrogance, to pit myself against such odds. The question is redundant: irrelevant in view of the massed, mute choir of the worlds autistic children, eclipsed only by the failure of science and medicine, in silent complicity, to take up the yoketo be relevant, to find autisms causes, and to stop the epidemic. Nonetheless, I still wonder.

In the meantime, an extraordinary web of deceit and calumny has been woven. Traveling aboard Rupert Murdochs runaway media train, journalist Brian Deer was instructed to find something big on MMR. Deer created a story so heartwarming to public health, so reassuring to doctors that clever people shut out reason, suspended logic, and slept with their dissonant dreams.

Deers story of me, the evil doctor, meant Medicine could be exonerated, public health policy had no hand in the autism catastrophe, and vaccines truly are a miracle. Some are still dreaming. In summary, in the wake of his 2004 expos on the work of a team of doctors at the Royal Free Hospital, Deer filed a complaint with the UKs General Medical Council, and in one of the most perverse rulings in the history of that organization, I and one other colleague had our medical licenses pulled. Dr. Kumar, the chairman of the adjudicating panel, profited before, during, and after his damning decision from undisclosed stock in MMR manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline. In a further tonic to the bottom line, he urged compulsory MMR vaccination of UK children at a medical conference within weeks of passing sentence on my colleagues and me.

Deers ego basked in the fame and recognition that his revelations had brought. While he might have hoped that parents exploited by me would hail him as a savior, this did not happen. Quite the opposite: their contempt for Deer led him into new avenues of invective and attacks against these same parents. On a global scale, parents were questioning more and more the safety and necessity of certain vaccines. The public relations wrecking crew that followed in the wake of Deers offensive needed more lubrication for their heart-and-minds machine. This came, perhaps coincidentally, soon after the now discredited heir-apparent to the News Corp Empire, James Murdoch, joined the board of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to protect that companys image in the media. Allegations of scientific fraud against meand me alonewere made by Deer in respect of the Lancet paperfirst in the Sunday Times. Since these articles did not have the desired effect of quelling support and putting an end to the vaccine safety debate, they were repeated, this time in the British Medical Journal, with its imprinteur of a proper medical journal, and in a supportive editorial by the editor-in-chief, Dr. Fiona Godlee. Among his many mistakes, these articles were Deers greatest. He, and I presume the BMJ, had taken the view that I was zero risk for legal redress; they could say what they liked without the risk of being sued. They were wrongthey had reckoned without the autism community, whose generosity and fighting spirit have made litigation possible. Through my lawyers I have now extended an invitation to Deer and Godlee to enjoy some good ol Texas hospitality. With it comes the opportunity to tell the history of the last fifteen years as it was. Thats it in a nutshell, except to say that in the wake of his disgrace, James Murdoch has now resigned from the board of GSK, apparently to focus his attention on operations in the US.

Meanwhile, this book grasps the nettle of alleged child abuse in the all too familiar setting of ASD, associated with gastrointestinal and immune disease. Part of the recent history has been concerned with the growing number of such cases. It is hoped that the book appalls and enlightens in equal measure.

This is not a run-of-the-mill dependency case. There are no allegations of substance abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence. Unfortunately, whether you want to call it Factitious Syndrome by Proxy, Mnchausen Syndrome by Proxy, or simply medical child abuse, all of these children have been subjected to egregious medical abuse at the hands of their parents.

Dr. Mary Sanders, Dr. Susan Stephens, and Dr. Albert Jacobson will all tell you that these children have been subjected to numerous medical examinations, medications, invasive procedures, hospitalizations, social isolation, and developmental delays because these parents have provided false, exaggerated, and incomplete information to numerous medical professionals.