Professor Sir Michael Rutter
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Professor Sir Michael Rutter & The Drug Industry Connections

September 27th to October 3rd] Expert in What? The First Expert Witness for the Prosecution by Martin J Walker

See: Wakefield GMC Hearing 2007  Autism and genetics

Book
Callous Disregard by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, MD

Quotes
This First Amended Complaint includes two new Counts against Professor Sir Michael L. Rutter.  Count VII alleges that he failed to disclose in at least four papers published between 2005 and 2009 that he had a crucial conflicting financial interest as a highly paid expert witness for the vaccine industry (and for the U.S. Government that defends industry in Vaccine Court) in at least three major litigation projects, U.S. litigation concerning mercury (thimerosal) as a cause of autism, the U.K. MMR litigation, and the U.S. Omnibus Autism Proceeding (concerning both MMR and thimerosal as causes of autism).  Although Professor. Rutter’s non-disclosure of a conflicting financial interest is precisely the same as that alleged against Dr. Wakefield (involvement in MMR litigation), the scope of Professor. Rutter’s wrongful conduct is far worse, involving multiple litigation projects, at least four papers, and the more stringent modern disclosure obligation.
    Count VIII alleges that Professor. Rutter gave false expert testimony in this FTP hearing by stating his opinion that Dr. Wakefield had a duty to disclose his participation in MMR litigation in the Lancet Case Series.  In the alternative, Professor. Rutter misled the Panel by hiding his own non-disclosure of the same type of conflicting interest for which he condemns Dr. Wakefield.  If Professor. Rutter doesn't honestly believe (although this would contravene the express language in the modern disclosure guidelines) that acting as a litigation expert on precisely the same subject discussed in his published papers (and on which he relies for his opinion in litigation) is a disclosable conflict, then he is falsely accusing Dr. Wakefield of breaching a non existent duty.  Or, if he honestly believes this is a disclosable interest, then his testimony is false and misleading because he has concealed the fact of his own pattern of non disclosure. [2010 Jan] False Testimony Denies Lancet Doctors a Fair Hearing

Psychiatrist Professor Sir Michael Rutter is a former (recent) Deputy Chairman of the immensely wealthy Wellcome Trust (founded by the Wellcome Foundation which is now Glaxo).  He is also one of the expert witnesses for Glaxo in the MMR litigation (something he did not declare, for example, in the Honda/Rutter paper denying MMR has any association with autism, but I do not see him before the GMC over that)
    Professor Sir Michael Rutter along with a troupe of psychiatrists now or formerly associated with The Maudsley Hospital and The Institute of Psychiatry at Kings have been working hard at telling the public autism is solely genetic and denying there is a world autism pandemic.  .....Genetics cannot account for the large rise we are seeing in autism since the mid 1980s.  So instead what we see are efforts by Rutter and the King's Institute of Psychiatry other autism denialists to claim there is no real rise in the prevalence of autism.  This claim is unscientific and runs counter to the facts documented in the formal literature.
    The Institute of Psychiatry has or is home to more than its fair share of doctors (psychiatrists mostly) who publish papers claiming autism is genetic and denying there is an autism epidemic (the correct word is pandemic - epidemics have far fewer victims).  These doctors include Rutter, Eric Fombonne, (now expert witness in the US in the thiomersal/autism litigation when he had previously published nothing about it), Simon Baron Cohen.  It is also home to controversial "Gulf War Syndrome" psychiatrist Simon Wessely, director of the Centre for Military Health Research at King's College London and who had been claiming ME/CFS is not a physical condition but a mental one contrary to the definition used around the world.  Sophia Wilson is an example of an ME/CFS sufferer who died following this approach to diagnosis, albeit not so far as I am aware a patient of any of the psychiatrists or institutions I name here.
    Also associated with The Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley is Dr Ben Goldacre, who constantly attacks alternative medicine in The Guardian whilst writing the "Badscience" column - yet Goldacre has no scientific qualifications and does not tell everyone that he practises psychiatry - the least successful branch of medicine in history and which has difficulty finding two reliable pieces of science to rub together to support the wacky quacky theories some of its proponents put out. 
    Rutter was also an expert witness in Malmo, Sweden in an MMR autism case where the key question was whether autism was solely genetic and not environmental.  Rutter's expert evidence was that it was genetic.  ----Professor Sir Michael Rutter & The Drug Industry Connections