Andrew Wakefield and MMR Flashcards
1
Q
Summarise the MMR scandal?
A
- Exploited vulnerable people by weaponising disinformation.
- Wakefield had significant conflicts of interest.
- Claimed that the MMR vaccine had caused autism in a 1998 article in the lancet. He based his beliefs on a study of 12 children, 8 of whom had autism which he blamed on the MMR vaccine.
- His theory was that the combination overwhelmed the children’s immune system.
- The MMR vaccine is delivered at the same time autism begins to present: at 18-24 months. This was therefore easy to exploit.
2
Q
What were Wakefield’s conflicts of interest?
A
- Wakefield had a significant conflict of interest and was recruited by a lawyer, organising a class action suit about ‘vaccine damages’, for £150 per hour.
- Later in 2004, a newspaper investigation also found that Wakefield had a further conflict of interest in the form of a patent for a single measles vaccines, had manipulated evidence, and had broken other ethical codes.
- In 2006, The Sunday Times reported that Wakefield had been paid £435,643, plus expenses, by British trial lawyers attempting to prove that the vaccine was dangerous, with the undisclosed payments beginning two years before the Lancet paper’s publication. This funding came from the UK legal aid fund, a fund intended to provide legal services to the poor.
