Dear Chancellor Gow and Dean Riley,
In light of the following facts, your students were not properly
informed by Immunology Professor Bernadette Taylor who stated "There
is no debate" at the university's lecture by Brian Deer. We hope you
will seriously consider the information below.
1. Regarding Mr. Deer's credibility, even those unfamiliar with the
details of the controversy would have to question his claim:
“Neither I nor BMJ knew Wakefield was in Texas." (Dr. Wakefield has
resided in Texas for 11 years and Mr. Deer has "investigated" and
reported on him while he has lived in Texas.)
2. In his letter to the BMJ, National Whistleblower Center board
member David Lewis, who examined the "Lancet 12" children's
histopathological grading sheets, makes is clear that Wakefield's
co-author, pathologist Amar Dhillon, did indeed diagnose colitis "in
a number of children" contrary to Mr. Deer's statement at your
university that none of the children had bowel disease.
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/09/re-how-case-against-mmr-vaccine-was-fixed
Dr. Lewis:
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=74&Itemid=76
3. Brian Deer stated at your university that Dr. Peter Fletcher was
never Chief Scientific Officer of the UK Department of Health. This
statement is easily proven false:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-376203/Former-science-chief-MMR-fears-coming-true.html
Deer misrepresented the UK's former Chief Scientific Officer, no
doubt due to Dr. Fletcher's criticisms of the MMR: "There are very
powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and
elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the
safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect
themselves."
4. Wakefield's co-author in the Lancet Paper, Dr. John Walker Smith,
was recently exonerated and had his license to practice medicine
restored, showing that Deer's allegations against Wakefield and
Walker Smith, which were rubber stamped by the General Medical
Council, had no foundation.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/03/professor-john-walker-smith-exonerated-in-autism-mmr-case.html
5. Brian Deer's attacks against Wakefield began when his Sunday
Times Editor, Paul Nuki, told him "Find something big" on the "MMR"
as Deer himself revealed here:
http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c672
Paul Nuki had a DIRECT FAMILY TIE to a government employee
responsible for MMR safety. Paul Nuki is the son of Professor George
Nuki who sat on the Committee on Safety in Medicines when it passed
Pluserix MMR vaccine as safe for use in 1987.
6. In February 2009, Sunday Times proprietor James Murdoch was
appointed to the board of MMR manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline with a
brief to “help to review external issues that might have the
potential for serious impact upon the group's business and
reputation"” This was swiftly followed by new attacks on Andrew
Wakefield’s reputation by Deer and other Times Newspaper
journalists.
7. Mr. Deer failed to disclose that he was privately the author of
at least three complaints to the General Medical Council that later
took away Wakefield's license. Violating journalistic ethics, Deer
had created the very news that he later covered. (GMC created a
letter a year later stating Deer was not listed as the complainant.)
8. Mr. Deer also failed to disclose that there were no complaints
against Wakefield by the children's families, most of whom very
strongly support him, and many of whom credit his team with a
diagnosis that led to effective treatment of their children's bowel
disease.
9. The Lancet withdrew the Wakefield paper seven months after the
Lancet's owner, Sir Crispin Davis, became a non-executive director
of MMR manufacturer Glaxo SmithKline. His brother, Nigel Davis, was
the high court judge who presided over the secret hearing to remove
funding from MMR litigation. Nigel Davis then issued a statement
(referring to himself in the third person): "the possibility of any
conflict of interest arising from his brother's position did not
occur to him."
10. The chairman of the GMC panel that struck Wakefield off the
medical register, Surendra Kumar, failed to disclose that he owned
shares in MMR manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline,
11. Mr. Deer's opening slide at the La Crosse talk, clearly
intended to refer to Wakefield, speaks volumes about Deer’s lack of
neutrality: “If he wasn’t so fucking greedy, he’d a been tougher to
spot.”
(The only money Wakefield earned as an expert witness was donated,
by him, to the Royal Free Hospital. This is well documented.)
12. Among the more egregious of his many false statements at La
Crosse was Mr. Deer's claim that Dr. Wakefield "called on parents to
boycott the MMR vaccine." He in fact recommended parents request the
single measles, mumps and rubella shots that were available at that
time in the UK, rather than the combination shot.
Please take these facts into consideration, and consider allowing
your students to learn the truth about Andrew Wakefield's work and
the influence of pharmaceutical interests on medical research and
policy. As in most complex issues, there are two sides to this story
and your students have only heard one.
Sincerely,
Jennifer VanDerHorst - Larson
Founder, The Canary Party