Hey all,
Today we are evaluating a vaccine fear: does MMR (and vaccination en masse) cause autism??? Excellent question, and timely, as I’m sure you remember the covid-19 vaccine fears. I find myself hesitant to see my family as a result. Why? Well, some people don’t want to get the jab, lest they develop some mysterious unnamed problems themselves. How did that even start? I know for me, autism and vaccination are both in my blood, so obviously they’re related! Well, if we’re being honest, the only relationship they have is mutually residing within me. So, if I know this, why doesn’t everyone? Why do people think this is controversial? Is it true? How did so much hesitance develop? Well, let’s inquire.
Doctor (at the time) Andrew Wakefield published a study at the Lancet (a well-known and respected medical journal) in 1998, claiming a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. The article, Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children (ILNHNSC&PDDIC for short (I’m kidding I’ll just call it the article)), was rife with questionable material (like the 12-person sample size), but it was new and scary, telling you the government is endangering children. This was compelling and a “different opinion” on the issue of vaccinations. He was featured on several news outlets, his words echoing into the night, still being used to justify anti-vax rhetoric to this day. He used the fear of big pharma to drum up concerns and used the parents of the subjects in the study as emotional fuel, claiming that he “damn right” trusted the parents’ ideas that the children experienced autism symptoms almost immediately after MMR in some cases.
His claims also mentioned a great deal of scientific evidence, utilizing his gut health doctorate as ethos, making up a new disease to connect to the vaccine. The empirical claims made have since been proven either highly misleading or all around fabricated. Wakefield went to a few events with fearful mothers and truth conferences where conspiracy theorists congregated, utilizing the paranoid and fragile to propagate these ideas. He also interviewed and made a documentary that was featured with CNN where he claimed that children may not be able to handle the triple threat MMR all at once, and that they should space them out. This was an interesting development, he was very much pro-vaccination, but separately. His belief purported that the parents should give children the vaccines one at a time. Curious. Expensive. Necessary for saving your kid from getting this “awful disease,” right? Six months before this and the actual study were in existence, Wakefield had filed a patent for a new measles vaccine.
Uh oh.
Someone wanted a shot (ha!) at the incumbent vaccine money. It’s not the Bollingers, selling mitigation techniques, but it is the original scam, a total alternative to the vaccine. These actors do not feel concerned, they feel dollars in their hands. Think about Neil Postman’s collection of propaganda definitions and tell me if you see a connection between them and the story above. Wakefield does an incredible job activating strong emotions by claiming your kids are being harmed; The immediate desire to fulfill this group of parents’ new vax vacuum came in the form of the patented immunization Wakefield peddled: responding to audience needs & values; The disgraced former doctor used the technique of simplifying information & ideas in an interesting way when he made a study that obfuscates truth by using a high level medical and scientific terminology that only he can translate; Of course we cannot forget about attacking opponents, which I would argue the study and proceeding alt vax (or is it preceding because he already had the jab prepared) is a clear and present attack on the legitimacy of MMR and vaccines in general. This dollar-do-dude was so obsessed with this money that he made up a disease, fabricated the evidence, and eventually got caught.
How did Wakefield get exposed? Why don’t we all believe vaccines cause autism? Who is the next character in this story? Enter, Brian Deer. This is the journalist who brought Andrew Wakefield’s schemes, fabrication of study materials, and immoral, unethical, ahippocratic techniques to light, causing his empire of ill-gotten gains and doctoral ethos to collapse. Andrew really was in Deer’s field, and needed a Wake when he was finished with him. Boom! Deer did the traditional investigative journalism route, with a background in pharmaceutical and medical-related stories. He went on discovering evidence and eventually found discrepancies in how Wakefield presented the information to the reality. This was due, in part, to the lawsuit Wakefield had leveraged against Deer, a journalist… Which is wild to do if you don’t want people to think you’re hiding something.
The lawsuit from Andrew Wakefield against Channel 4 News, and Deer’s personal website, gave Deer exclusive access to the confidential study information behind Wakefield’s 1998 article, involving the details of all the patients/subjects of Wakefield’s abuse. He (Wakefield) had fabricated the details on most of the patients to align his message more closely and had also completely ignored patients that did not align, taking some out. He also claimed to find measles virus in the guts of children used as samples, this would mean (according to his logic) that he was correct in them having autism from the MMR. That would be great for him if the subjects all had autism. Which they did not. Wakefield’s “findings” fly in the face of even the logic he is purporting to ascribe to. Brian Deer brought all this information together, then reported on it, in MMR – What they didn’t tell you.
Brian Deer’s documentary, above, and his book, The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Science, Deception, and the War on Vaccines, are important in that they are where the bulk of information on how this all happened can be found. The report and book are the most important compilation of evidence and expose in the realm of vaccines today. The documentary stands as a refutation of Wakefield’s methods, findings, and uncovers a massive conspiracy laden within the time it was made.
I believe the understanding of systemic problems and conspiracies/skepticism within dissent are important for workers, thinkers, and digital citizens alike. We live in a digital space for so much of our lives, we ought to take a few pages out of a master mediatition’s tome and research like our lives depend on it, because they really do at the end of the day. Today we face similar vaccine hesitance, with conspiracies out of nowhere that the shot will in some way harm you. This is fear, the feeling is valid to have, but the resulting paranoia and destruction of our social contract is not the answer. If Brian Deer came out with an article about the covid vaccines being dangerous, how would we respond? Would his presentation of rhetoric hold up better than Wakefield’s doctorate did? Are there instances of vaccine affirmation going on today outside Deer? When will Deer make another hit piece of journalism slamming the new anti-vax movement idealogues? These and more are questions I hope you’ll think about following this post. Thank you for reading some of my secrets.
Be skeptical, be discerning, never stopping, always learning,
-pey
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