WEBVTT - Part Two: Andrew Wakefield: The Worst Doctor Alive 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:05.600 Mmmm. Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the show where we 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:08.280 tell you everything you don't know about the very worst 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:12.160 people in all the history. I'm Robert Evans. Sophie does 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:16.560 not like me using my my accent, which I consider 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:19.200 a type of racism, because I am a Southern man 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.920 and I have to hide the reality of who I am. 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:27.080 Is that your natural voice, that's my natural no affectation, 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:31.560 that's me. That's deep South, deep South man. I I'm 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:35.040 a Southern gentleman. I don't know. I feel like you 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:39.680 went from Southern farmer to uh, Southern lawyer in a 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:42.800 white linen suit. Well, now that one was not my honor. 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.760 There's no there's nothing classy about my background. H yeah. 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:51.319 Now Anna Selina's back comics by Anna Comics artist Uh. 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:58.320 Uh street fighter uh. President of the Anti Vaccination Society 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:02.400 of America. Unfortunately, that is why you brought me on here, 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:07.200 not because of my comics or Twitter hot takes, but 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:11.240 because I am the president of the anti vaxers. That 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:13.160 was me to me and you're not. But we are 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.880 talking about the anti vaccine movement still we are, and 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:20.200 I feel weirdly conflicted about it so far because we 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:25.120 spent an episode talking about how both sides had points 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:28.920 and we're also racist. Yeah, I mean everybody's racist. In 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:31.039 the nineties, you're not going to find a lot of 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:34.520 not racist people. Even like the not racist people still 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:42.400 use terms that are like, oh, guys, you are. Yeah. 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:46.120 It's like watching Blazing Saddles where it's like, oh my god, yeah, yeah, 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.280 I could see like revolutionary for its time, but also 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:52.400 like my old bosses were like, it's the best movie. 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:55.040 That's your that's your homework. You need to go watch 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.880 that movie. It's so funny. And I watched it and look, 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:05.160 that movie is racist and sexist. And the first time 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:07.600 it was a huge step forward. I understand nobody and 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:12.120 say you'll never like it was everything that's great on 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.520 a scale when we talk about history, yes, for itst 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:17.400 time it was, but watching it now, it's just like, 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:20.920 this is not least. You go to a lot of abolitionists, 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.040 like people who are like fighting to end slavery in 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:25.360 the eighteen fifties, and they would be like, well, of course, 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:27.359 you know, black people earned as intelligent as white people, 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:29.480 but they shouldn't be slaves. And it's like, okay, well 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:33.120 you're racist, but you're not in favorite slavery. So I 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:37.560 guess we're greating on a curve here. That's true. Yeah, 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:40.440 it's it's just it's complicated. I can't wait for twenty 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.079 years from now when people look over at my tweets, 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.720 because you know, Twitter will be here in twenty years. Oh. Absolutely, 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:48.720 this one all collapsed like the house of cards that 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:54.760 people look at my tweets and be like, oh problematic. Yeah, 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:57.160 I feel like that might be just bite owning pets 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:02.040 and stuff. You think, No, I wonder if that's the 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.160 next frontier. Who knows. I know that future generalation generations 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.079 will judge me for all of the meat that I yeah, 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.079 no arguments there. I hope. I hope we get there. 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:17.160 We will, I mean, because the planet will die, that's true. 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:20.520 That's like with these vaccines. It's like people will get it, 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:22.920 people will get it, but tens of thousands of people 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:27.440 will die first. The human totally nightmarish. That's what convinces people. 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:29.960 That's what convinces people. I love. I guess one of 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:33.200 my favorite kinds of stories is like terrible people who 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:36.880 we're heroes. Still, Like there's this great story of like 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.800 during the Japanese invasion. I think it was not Shanghai. Um, 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:42.760 it might have been Shanghai. Was the Japanese invasion of 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.160 this one Chinese city where like a massacred tens of 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.880 thousands of civilians, and like the guy who protected a 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.640 huge number of them by like creating this international quarter 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.240 in the city to like protect all of these civilians 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.560 from being murdered by the Japanese was a Nazi Like 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:01.560 this literal knots are you saving thousands of women and 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:04.360 children from like the Japanese murder? So why did he 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.440 Well because he was just like everyone was a member 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:09.920 of the and this was like before the Holocaust really 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:12.320 got started. So he was like racist and anti Semitic, 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.600 but he wasn't pro murder. He was just like a 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.479 businessman who joined the Nazi party. But like once he 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:20.360 saw people getting killed in the streets, was like, I 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.760 don't want this happening. It's a it's a mess. Like 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:26.960 that is a mess. That's a mess. I I'm always 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.240 interested in stories like that of like people who are 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.600 objectively flawed bad people. You still did a good thing. Well. 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:38.200 I think we are all objectively flawed bad people doing 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:42.440 what we think is right or ignoring our moral compass altogether. 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.040 And those people are not always the worst people. I 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.040 ignore my moral compass all the time, all the time. 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.919 And uh, I'm not the worst person. And that's that's 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:54.919 what I always shoot for, is not the worst, not 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:57.360 the worst, My the worst person today. Note Roger Stone 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:03.680 is still alive. Fantastic good. I'm doing nailing it. The 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:05.839 bar is low boy. This has been a long and 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:10.960 meandering introduction. We're talking about Andrew Wakefield today. Yes, any Wakefield? Okay? 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.839 So uh. The current ongoing measles outbreak of two thousand, nineteen, 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.440 centering around Portland, Oregon, is the largest such outbreak in 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:20.600 twenty years. Clark County, Washington, where the outbreak began, had 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:23.320 a measles vaccination rate of just seventy eight percent, not 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.160 high enough for her community to protect the immuno compromised. 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:28.919 Clark County just happens to be a recognized hotspot of 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.880 anti vaccine sentiment. In December two thousan fourteen, a trip 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:34.279 to Disneyland led to a hundred and forty seven confirmed 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:36.799 cases of measles. A hundred and ten of those people 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:39.160 lived in California, and half of that group had not 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.440 taken the MMR vaccine, so this is not purely a 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:44.960 coastal phenomenon. Over the last five years, the number of 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.080 children who go unvaccinated each year, or in Texas each year, 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:50.599 has doubled to more than fifty seven thousand. Of course 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:53.920 it's Texas. Of course it's Texas. The direct cause here 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:57.440 is the existence of non medical exemptions, essentially a descendant 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.479 of the old British exemptions for conscientious objectors. But the 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:03.040 real true cause of these outbreaks of diseases that by 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:04.839 all right, should be long dead by now is a 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:10.200 single man. His name is Andrew Wakefield, who's his name 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:12.760 should be more well known. I feel like Jenny McCarthy 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.760 really gets the blame for this movement, and what she's 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:20.680 doing is bad, But this guy's why. Oh yeah, bring 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.520 it on. Andrew was born in nineteen fifty seven. We 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:25.480 don't know an awful lot about his early life, or 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:27.160 at least I was not able to find an awful lot. 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:30.240 His parents were both doctors, and his father was a neurologist, 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:34.520 which is about the doctor is kind of doctor that exists? Um. Yeah. 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:37.120 He enrolled in St. Mary's Hospital Medical School as a 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:40.320 young adult, focusing on gastro Inturology. He seems to have 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:42.680 been popular throughout this period. He was the captain of 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:44.960 his medical school's rugby team and generally looked to be 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:46.880 on a winning path in life when he graduated. And 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:49.760 I'm just going to say this, I played female rugby 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:54.680 and frougby as it's known, and male rugby players can't 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:58.080 be a little much they can, they get a little brilli, 0:06:58.240 --> 0:06:59.680 they can. It would have been a red flag for 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:04.760 this guy. It's basically war without guns or paths or paths, 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:06.960 and when women do it, it's pretty cool and feminist. 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:12.160 But women do it, they get fraddy. Yeah well yeah, well, 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:15.720 are making a blanket statement. I hope male rugby players. 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:18.880 There's only one sport that I'm going to attack blanket 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:21.840 all of the players of on this podcast, and that's 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:26.440 high ally. Yes. Yeah, well that's a correct take. Yeah yeah, 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:31.080 funk that sport. Fuck you for doing it. Yes, strong stance. Now. 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:33.120 For more than a decade, Andrew Wakefield seems to have 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:35.800 been a perfectly fine doctor and medical researcher. From nine 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:38.320 to nineteen and nine, he worked at the University of 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:40.960 Toronto as part of a team studying tissue rejection from 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:44.400 transplanted intestines. From the early nineteen nineties. Back in the UK, 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.520 he started doing research at the Royal Free College of London. 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.640 In nineteen three, he published an article suggesting that the 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:53.640 measles virus might cause Crone's disease. This drew a lot 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:55.360 of ice his wife, and two years later, when he 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:59.040 published research suggesting that the measles vaccine might cause Crone's disease, 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:01.800 even more people's started talking about this brash young doctor 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.760 who was turning the system on his head. Now a 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:07.000 lot of evidence suggests that there is a link between 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.040 measles exposure and childhood and Crown's disease. There is, however, 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:12.800 no evidence of a link between vaccination and Crown's disease. 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:15.000 At the time when he started the research and made 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:17.960 sense to look into, made sense to look into. But 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:22.680 did he have any bias pushing him toward. That's going 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:24.920 to be a big focus of the episodes. So, and 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:26.480 one thing I should point out is that if you 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:28.800 know a lot of people with autism, kids with autism 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:30.920 in particular, a lot of them have weird bowel issues, 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:33.840 gastrointestinal issues and stuff like that. It's very common. So 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:36.160 this is something that like people and trying to explain 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:37.959 for a while, and why why do these kids with 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:41.240 autism also have all of these weird like gastrointestinal issues. 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:43.880 So that's why he sort of gets into the study 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:46.600 of autism as a gastroenturologist because there's some stuff there 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.240 that that needs explaining. Okay, So it seems like maybe 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:52.840 Andrew Wakefield was starting from an honest place. It's not 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:55.520 clear at what point that changed, but the evidence suggests 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.880 that Andrew Wakefield instantly saw financial opportunity in this purported 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.440 connection between the MEAs vaccine and Crown's disease. In March, 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:05.760 Wakefield filed for a patent for a test that would 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:09.760 detect Crown's disease or ulcerative colitis by finding measles virus 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:12.960 in the battel tissue product or fluids. Two years later, 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:16.120 Andrew Wakefield drew up a business scheme to present to investors. 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:18.960 In it, he suggested using his patented tests to create 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.840 a company that would make enormous profits from running these tests. 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:26.000 The anticipated annual income top seventy two million pounds per year. 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:29.440 The perspectives he put together trying to Interact investors noted 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:32.200 in view of the unique services offered by the company 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.920 and its technology, particularly for the molecular diagnostic the essays 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.000 can command premium prices. It sounds like he's just a scammer. 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:42.199 It sounds like he's just a scam artist already. You 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:46.720 don't even so it's so scammy like there's like so 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.319 many levels that a scam artist could be a scammer. 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:51.840 And Andrew Wakefield is a scammer on twice as many 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:53.840 levels as that. But it's going to take some unpacking 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.599 to get through. So during all this time, Wakefield was 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.640 conducting a study at the Royal Free College. This study 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:03.640 of tw children suggested that the MMR vaccine, which bundled measles, mumps, 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.080 and rubella vaccinations together, could cause the measles virus to 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:11.240 infect a child's intestines. Now, this study was an attempt 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:13.800 to explain something that yeah parents with autistic children reported 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:17.360 for years. Wigfield's research, published in nine seemed to suggest 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:20.560 that the MMR vaccine harmed not just the child's intestines, 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:22.960 but the neurons and its brain. So this is the 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:25.199 beginning of the idea that like, maybe this vaccine is 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:27.520 what's causing the auticis and what year is this? This 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:30.640 is when he publishes his research. Okay, so this is 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:36.920 pretty recent, pretty recent, and again twelve kids, so not 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.360 a huge study, not what you would want to make 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:42.880 sweeping claims about a vaccine. I feel like technically that 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:46.880 would be rejected, right, that's the smallest sample. Flight Well, 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:48.720 that is how you start, you know, you would be 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.560 an anecdotal at that point. It seems like it would 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.360 be anecdotal. It is almost It's one of those things 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:56.640 where if if he had immediately gone from that to 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.040 doing a two and fifty person study or something like that, 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.480 that would be how a normal scientists have preceded. But 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:06.280 that was not what Wakefield did. Wakefield did not immediately 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.160 start telling people to not vaccinate, like he wasn't starting 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:11.920 from anti vaccine, but he did start by saying, like, 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.480 because of this research, I found we should stop bundling 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:19.320 all these vaccinations together, and right at that same time, 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.480 eight months before releasing his paper, actually he patented a 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:26.160 single measles vaccine, which is what he claimed after releasing 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:28.600 his paper was the safest way to vaccinate your kids. 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:34.000 Separate all the vaccinations so when they released this study 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:36.520 in nineteen ninety eight. Andrew Wakefield in the Royal Free 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:39.600 Medical School released the paper via a twenty three minute 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:43.680 long video news conference, which is not how scientific studies 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:46.679 involving twelve people are usually. You wanted people to see 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.560 his face. Wanted people to see his face. In this 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:52.200 press conference. He made a very direct plea for people 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:54.760 to start using the exact kind of single use vaccine 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:58.800 he just patented eight months before. Oh god, quote, this 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:01.600 is Wakefield. There is fishent anxiety in my own mind 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:03.960 for the long term safety of the polyvalent vaccine that 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:06.480 is the MMR vaccination and combination that I think it 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:10.200 should be suspended in favor of the single vaccines. Now. 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:12.480 The journal he published in The Lancet is an old 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.840 and extremely authoritative publication. They and his hospital, the Royal 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:19.040 Free Hospital, knew about Wakefield's ambitions to profit off of 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:21.480 this work. They threw resources into helping him launch his 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:23.600 study with the press conference, which you know, again is 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:25.800 not the norm. They knew he was trying to raise 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:27.640 money to start a company, and they knew he'd patented 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:29.920 a form of medicine that he was advising everyone to take. 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.600 So both institutions took steps to protect themselves. The Lancet 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.319 published a critique of wakefield study and the same issue 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.280 in which it was released. This critique pointed out that 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:41.559 the sample group was too small to draw big conclusions 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.080 from and that it had not been randomly determined. The 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:46.760 Lancet did not make any mention of this critical article 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:50.200 in the press release, though. The Royal Free Hospital convened 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.320 a panel of five doctors to present to follow up 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:54.720 press conference, where their panel would all agree that people 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.440 should keep using the MMR vaccine until more research had 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.480 been done. Now, that was the plan for the press conference, 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:02.920 but it didn't work out that way. The press conference 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:04.760 wound up turning into a ship show. I found a 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:07.680 recollection of it from a journalist who attended. Quote the 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:10.240 five of them the panel that the hospital had convened. 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:12.480 We're sitting behind a table with Andrew Wakefield on the 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.240 extreme left in Ari Zuckerman on the right. The tension 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:17.360 rose as the event progressed, and by the end Wakefield 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.199 was coolly urging patients to give their children single vaccines 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.120 at annual intervals, while Zuckerman was on his feet banging 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:25.520 the lectern and frustration as he insisted that the MMR 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:27.719 vaccine had been given to millions of children around the 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.720 world and was safe. So within a year of this 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:33.800 press conference, Andrew Wakefield had become the director of two businesses, 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:37.200 both Carmel and Unigenetics Ltd, who were registered in early 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:41.280 nine Right after this press conference came out, Andrew Wakefield 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:44.040 submitted a confidential report on behalf of Unigenetics to the 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:47.200 British Legal Aid Board and secured eight hundred thousand dollars 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:49.280 in public funding to perform his tests on children in 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:52.520 a public hospital. Ward Wakefield sought an additional two point 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:54.760 one million pounds to get his venture off the ground. 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.120 In a quote private and confidential prospectus that later wound 0:13:58.200 --> 0:13:59.680 up in the hands of a journalist for the British 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.760 Medical Journal, Andrew Wakefield stated that he believed that within 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.680 three years of launching his diagnostic testing business, it would 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:10.559 be worth twenty eight million pounds. He's so transparent. If 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:14.720 you're listening, I can see. I mean, it's just how 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.560 people get scammed. It's just yet another grifter or era 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.920 of grifters. Now Wakefield still needed that investment money and 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:25.360 one study of twelve kids no matter how publicized, was 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:27.400 not going to draw the kind of funding that he needed, 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.240 especially since other members of the medical community had started 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.440 loudly pointing out the flaws in Wakefield's research. In order 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:36.119 to secure that extra cash, Andrew Wakefield and a pathologist 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.840 he had hired for Unigenetics, prepared to present new research 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:41.280 at a London meeting of the Pathological Society in March 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.520 of two thousand. According to the British Medical Journal quote, 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:48.080 based on alleged gut biopsy samples from Walker Smith's patients 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:50.440 tend with autism and three with Crohn's disease tested at 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.760 a Dublin laboratory, it claimed a possible causal link and 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.640 given a Wakefield presentation, promised a storm like the press 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.880 conference two years before. So he's done more research, but 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.240 he's not doing another study. He's just going straight to 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:06.160 press conference without actually publishing a peer of you'd study. Yeah, 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:11.400 and did you say ten people? Ten thirteen total patients? 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:14.880 This is not how you do research. This is not 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.920 how you do research. And it's it's such bad science 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.480 that I don't even have a good way to segue 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:25.880 into this Dorito's plug. But I'm gonna I'm gonna that's 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:33.200 a good Derito Dorito's if you're listening, sponsor this podcast now. 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:35.880 And in deference to the fans who don't like the 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:39.120 sound of crunching Dorito's. Really it's like the anti vaccine 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:41.680 pro vaccine argument in the eighteen hundreds, were like, there's 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:43.400 two sides here. There's a lot of people who say 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.560 more Dorito's crunching, and a lot of people who say less. 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:47.760 I'm gonna lean on the side of not doing as 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:50.200 much Dorito's crunching. But every now and then, you gotta 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:52.720 right now and then I got, you know, fifteen minute 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:55.840 fast for our fifteen seconds past forward. That's the thing. Yeah, 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:57.880 that will be the only crunch in this episode. But 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:00.560 I just needed it. I needed to. I want to 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:05.400 believe everyone who listens to podcast has a little love 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.520 of a s mr. Oh yeah, I mean you would hope. 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.440 Some people don't like the sound of eating, which is 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:13.080 why I wolf found like a third of a bag 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:17.680 of Derrisos like a fucking monster. Yeah, I was eating 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:20.040 my cookies, so I was trying to be so sneaky 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.880 about it. Sophie's eating dog treats right now. Yeah, I mean, 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:26.000 while they're next to her bag of fritos. There's no 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:29.640 way to know which one she's eating, and she did reach. Yeah, 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:33.800 that's what I thought. Now. Wakefield started talking with pharmaceutical 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.360 companies right before this planned like press release um. One 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:39.240 of them even flew him to Canada to talk. He 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.080 was negotiating with Johnson and Johnson, Merk and Smith Klent 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:44.440 Beach him. So it looked like he was about to 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.000 get the funding. He wanted a couple of million dollars 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:49.640 to start producing this single shot vaccine. Where was the 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.000 oversight of this guy? Why did he lose his license? 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.080 That's coming up. Thankfully he did not get to carry 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:59.760 out all of his plans. Another doctor, Mark Peppi's, would 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:02.200 find to put a stop to wakefield scheme. Peppies had 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:04.040 recently been made the head of medicine at the Royal 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:06.600 Free College and he did not like Wakefield or his research. 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:09.520 Peppi's convinced the college to send Wakefield a letter finally 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:12.120 admitting their concern about his involvement with these new companies 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.000 he'd created in his financial interest in producing the single 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:20.000 use measles vaccine quote. This concern arose originally because the 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.720 company's business plan appears to depend on premature, scientifically unjustified 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.159 publication of results which do not conform to the rigorous 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:30.480 academic and scientific standards that are generally expected. So first study, fine, 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:32.600 it's okay to do if you're trying to prove something 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:34.720 new and put out a study with a small sample size. 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:37.800 But the fact that your second press release isn't even 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.959 a study and involves one more person this seems shady 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:44.320 to us. So the college did not immediately cut his 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.040 funding or fire him. They offered him a continuation of 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.480 his funding if he would conduct new research and test 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.320 his theories about the MMR vaccine. He was promised help 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:54.280 with the study of a hundred and fifty children to 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.280 see if his research for the lance that could be 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:58.879 replicated with a larger group was what real scientists do. 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:03.520 But mon, how did they not get it by this point? Well, 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.480 so what might have been wishful thinking? Um, some of 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:08.600 it might have been legitimately being like, okay, well, maybe 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:11.080 you know, there's clearly something going on between like bow 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:13.840 disorders and autism, so maybe something's happening here it's worth 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.399 looking into. So they offered to pay him to do 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.040 a study with a hundred and fifty children uh and 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.080 Wakefield initially agreed to conduct the study, but he never 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:26.439 actually did because the nine lands that study had been 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:29.840 a total scam. None of this came out until two 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:32.280 thousand eleven, when a journalist named Brian Deer published an 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.000 investigation for the British Journal of Medicine. It was revealed 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:37.119 for the first time that Andrew Wakefield had actually been 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:41.040 running a second secret scam alongside his other more obvious scams. 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.240 Rather than being a legitimate study motivated by sheer interest 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.040 in the truth, his Lancet paper had essentially been commissioned 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:49.920 by a lawyer named Richard Barr, who represented a bunch 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.000 of families who believed their kids had gotten sick through 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.840 the MMR vaccine. Wakefield's research started as paid work for 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:59.240 a lawyer trying to justify a lawsuit. He made something 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.280 like four hundred fifty thou dollars for this work alone. 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.160 None of this was known until Brian Deer's report came out. 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.040 All of Wakefield's patients had been recruited by anti MMR 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:12.280 vaccine campaigners, and even then, Deer's research showed that Wakefield 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.200 had strayed up lied about many of their symptoms. Being 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:18.240 a journalist, Brian Deer actually took Wakefield's research to the 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:20.439 parents of the kids in the study to like be like, 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:21.919 is this what happened to your kid? Is this what 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:23.640 happened to your kid? Is this what happened to your kid? 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.720 And it turns out that he had essentially misrepresented everybody's symptoms. 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:33.640 Whoa so complete fabrica, complete fabrication. Not just a guy 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:35.600 who came up with a study, saw that there might 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:37.719 be a connection and they decided to try to profit 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:39.119 on it, which is what it looked like at first, 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:41.960 but a guy whose whole study was falsified from the 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.960 beginning because a lawyer was paying him to find a connection. 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:48.400 God damn it. Yeah, now we're going to get into 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:51.960 just how that famous Lancet study, which by the way, 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.840 is still to this day the single biggest scientific underpenning 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:59.160 of the anti vaccine movement. Do they know it's fake? Well, 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.719 everyone does, but some people don't accept it. It's like, 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.879 you know, Nathan Phillips and that Sandman kid confrontation on 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.920 the in d C where we all have the same 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.200 hour and forty five minute video of everything we read 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:14.359 different and we all read it differently. This one is 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:19.040 like it was fake. Truth is dead, Anna, truth is dead, 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.080 but you know it's not dead. Doritos, Derito's and the 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.720 wonderful sponsors that helped keep this show afloat with products 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:36.120 and services. We're back, Anna, You're eating a derrito, I am, 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:38.400 But I'm trying to avoid chewing into the mic because 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:41.120 I know some people don't like it. Some people don't 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:44.760 like it. You know what nobody likes falsified medical studies. 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:49.280 People need to collapsing vaccination rates in the Western world. 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:53.400 So Brian Deer put together He's got a great article 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:55.520 for the British medic Coool Journal that goes into detail 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:57.400 on all this, but he put together a little summary 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:00.159