Public healthDisgraced doctor had secret businesses to exploit vaccine fears
Disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield, who used fraudulent data to “prove” a relationship between vaccination of children and autism — triggering a health crisis in 1998 — has been revealed to have planned to benefit from his fraud: in a prospectus to investors, from whom Wakefield was trying to raise an initial 700,000 Pounds, he predicts the investors could make up to 28 million Pounds($43,367,082; 33,290,350 Euros) a year from the diagnostic kits his company would sell to parents who Wakefield had intentionally scared with his “revalations” about the source of autism
Dr. Wakefield, with wife Carmel, after exposure as fraud // Source: thisislondon.co.uk
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor who claimed a link between MMR and autism, planned secret businesses intended to make huge sums of money, in Britain and America, from his now-discredited allegations (the MMR vaccine is an immunization shot against measles, mumps, and rubella [also called German measles]).
The Wakefield scheme was exposed Tuesday in the second part of a British Medical Journal series of special reports, “Secrets of the MMR scare,” by investigative journalist Brian Deer. Last week BMJ revealed the scientific fraud behind the appearance of a link between the vaccine and autism. Now Deer follows the money.
Drawing on investigations and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the report shows how Wakefield’s institution, the Royal Free Medical School in London, supported him as he sought to exploit the MMR scare for financial gain.
It reveals how Wakefield met with medical school managers to discuss a joint business even while the first child to be fully investigated in his research was still in the hospital, and how just days after publication of that research, which triggered the health crisis in 1998, he brought business associates to the Royal Free to continue negotiations.
One business, named after Wakefield’s wife, intended to develop Wakefield’s own “replacement” vaccines, diagnostic testing kits and other products which only stood any real chance of success if public confidence in MMR was damaged.
Documents reveal the planned shareholdings of Wakefield and his collaborators, and how much Wakefield expected to receive personally. Financial forecasts made available for the first time today show Wakefield and his associates predicting they could make up to £28 million ($43,367,082; €33,290,350) a year from the diagnostic kits alone.
“It is estimated that the initial market for the diagnostic will be litigation driven testing of patients with AE [autistic enterocolitis] from both the U.K. and the USA,” said a 35 page “private and confidential” prospectus obtained by Deer, aimed at raising an initial £700,000 from investors. “It is estimated that by year 3, income from this testing could be about £3,300,000 rising to about £28,000,000 as diagnostic testing in support of therapeutic regimes come on stream.”
Deer’s investigation also reveals today that Wakefield was offered support to try to replicate his results, gained from just twelve children, with a larger validated study of up to 150 patients, but that he refused to carry out the work, claiming that his academic freedom would be jeopardized. His research claims have never been replicated.
