Dr. Andrew Wakefield, Prof. John Walker Smith, Dr. Simon Burch, and 10 other co-authors published a paper in the Lancet, a British Medical Journal, which showed a possible correlation between the MMR vaccine and resultant gastrointestinal dysfunction along with developmental delays and autism. Though the paper itself did not state a conclusive causal effect, it did state the need for further study into the possibility that the MMR shot was to blame. Wakefield went on to publicly bring attention to the possibility, criticizing the MMR shot and calling for separation of the three vaccines.
He has since been subjected to relentless personal and professional attacks in the media, and from governments, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. In the wake of demonstrably false and highly damaging allegations of scientific fraud by British journalist Brian Deer and the British Medical Journal, Dr. Wakefield is pursuing defamation proceedings against them in Texas.
While repeated studies from around the world confirmed Wakefield’s bowel disease in autistic children [xi] and his position that safety studies of the MMR are inadequate, [xii] Dr. Wakefield ’s career has been destroyed by false allegations. Despite this he continues to work tirelessly to help solve the autism catastrophe.
In a recently published December 13, 2012 vaccine court ruling, hundreds of thousands of dollars were awarded to Ryan Mojabi, [i] whose parents described how “MMR vaccinations,” caused a “severe and debilitating injury to his brain, diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder (‘ASD’).”
Later the same month, the government suffered a second major defeat when young Emily Moller from Houston won compensation following vaccine-related brain injury that, once again, involved MMR and resulted in autism. The cases follow similar successful petitions in the Italian and US courts (including Hannah Poling [ii], Bailey Banks [iii], Misty Hyatt [iv], Kienan Freeman [v], Valentino Bocca [vi], and Julia Grimes [vii]) in which the governments conceded or the court ruled that vaccines had caused brain injury. In turn, this injury led to an ASD diagnosis. MMR vaccine was the common denominator in these cases.
And ON 6/21/2013, scientists and physicians from Wake Forest University, New York, and Venezuela, reported findings that not only confirm the presence of intestinal disease in children with autism and intestinal symptoms, but also indicate that this disease may be novel. [viii] Using sophisticated laboratory methods Dr. Steve Walker and his colleagues endorsed Wakefield’s original findings by showing molecular changes in the children’s intestinal tissues that were highly distinctive and clearly abnormal.
