Polio vaccine victim David Salamone died on September 7 at age 28. He might have lived longer if his dad actually read the information sent to him by Barbara Loe Fisher’s National Vaccine Information Center.
Instead, John Salamone provided favorable content for credential-faker Paul Offit‘s book Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. Here is Salamone in his own words on page 81:
“[Barbara Loe Fisher’s group] sends me material and I put it in the circular file.”
“It would be reckless to go out there and attribute certain side effects to a vaccine when they’re not documented by science. Attacking vaccines with bad science and bad information is nothing short of reckless and irresponsible.”
“[Doctors’] response, candidly, was not great. My biggest problem was that when you talked about vaccine injury, you were immediately labeled as anti-vaccine. They wanted to put me in the same category as the Fishers of the world, the organizations that had a broader agenda of reducing if not eliminating many of the vaccines. To the contrary, I was pro- vaccine. But I was pro-vaccine safely. I was knowledgeable enough to know the history that many more people’s children and adults have been saved by vaccines than have ever died from them.”
Hope your son’s death was worth pleasing doctors, John. If only Paul Offit remembered to tweet his condolences.
Autism Investigated is scooping its planned obituary for senior turncoat author John Walker-Smith when he dies. He turns 82 this year.
Gastroenterologist and senior Wakefield turncoat author John Walker-Smith has just died. Before retiring in 2000, he was a colleague of Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s at the Royal Free Hospital where they published a number of papers on autism and bowel disease. One of those was their seminal 1998 paper that first described a connection between autism, bowel disease and vaccination. Walker-Smith would later infamously retract the possibility of a vaccine link with nine other coauthors in 2004.
Despite his betrayal of vaccine-injured children in doing so, many of their parents continued to support him. When he was practicing medicine, he had treated and helped many children with autism whose gastrointestinal symptoms were dismissed by other doctors. Had his medical contributions ended there, he would be rightly seen as a hero. But that was not to happen, as he would betray the very children he helped.
The year after Walker-Smith retired from medicine, Dr. Andrew Wakefield was run out of the Royal Free Hospital for their research. Following his dismissal, the hospital’s GlaxoSmithKline-backed Head of Medicine Mark Pepys launched an aggressive campaign to discredit the work Walker-Smith and Wakefield conducted and obstruct vaccine injury litigation. Wakefield never wavered, but Walker-Smith eventually did.
Pepys started his attacks first by intimidating the 1998 paper’s coauthors still employed at Royal Free. Then through leaking medical records to a freelance opposition researcher, Pepys targeted Wakefield and Walker-Smith directly. Within weeks of allegations of unethical research publicized against them both, Walker-Smith signed his name to the infamous retraction.
Although he would successfully appeal the allegations and strike them down in court, he kept his name on the retraction. Not once did he demand the journal reinstate the 1998 paper nor demand his medical board reinstate Dr. Wakefield’s license.
Yet Walker-Smith still enjoys considerable support in the autism community which he does not deserve. No one has done more to make censorship of vaccine injury more publicly acceptable than John Walker-Smith. His betrayal of vaccine-injured children will be his everlasting legacy.
“But people were taking that as further evidence of a link with MMR that we never claimed and unwittingly we were adding fuel to the fire.” – Wakefield turncoat author Simon Murch, The Observer, November 2, 2003
Pharma superstar Mark Pepys made 10 coauthors retract the interpretation of Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 autism-vaccine paper. But even before that, Pepys made two of them withdraw authorship from another Wakefield paper. One essentially admitted doing so to sabotage the litigation against vaccination.
Simon Murch and Michael Thomson withdrew their names from a November 2003 paper also coauthored by Wakefield. The withdrawal happened after the paper was accepted for publication in May and both approved the version as it would be published. Remarkably, Murch cited not wanting to build a case against vaccination to justify his withdrawal:
“I have withdrawn because the data was being justified in a way I couldn’t agree with. All the work I have done shows evidence of subtle inflammation of the intestine in many but not all autistic children. But people were taking that as further evidence of a link with MMR that we never claimed and unwittingly we were adding fuel to the fire.”
As Andrew Wakefield made clear, Simon Murch could not have withdrawn for scientific reasons:
“He cannot make that claim because he signed up to have it published. We were not going to publicise this but after what Simon Murch said we did. He is distancing himself because of the hierarchy where he works.”
Not “adding fuel to the fire” as Murch put it could have only meant not fueling the fires of litigation that should have burned GlaxoSmithKline. Both Thomson and Murch were also coauthors of a 2002 study that showed measles virus in guts of children with autism and bowel disease. Such a study was pivotal for planned litigation against the vaccine industry. Their later withdrawal from the 2003 paper coincided with the termination of legal aid for vaccine injury litigation in the United Kingdom.
At the time, Murch and Thomson were still employed at the Royal Free Hospital under pharma “superstar” Mark Pepys. If they didn’t pull their names, they would not have remained employed under him as Wakefield wasn’t.
Sir Mark Pepys, Head of Medicine at Royal Free Hospital (1999-2011) giving the 2016 Commencement Address at Cedars-Sinai
“Had the advice of the Institutions been sought at the time concerning conflict of interest, they would undoubtedly have advised that any potential conflict should be declared, so that others could judge whether such conflicts were real.” – Royal Free University and College Medical School Statement in The Lancet
“Funds received from the Legal Aid Board were paid into, and properly administered through, a research account with the special trustees of the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust.” – Dr. Andrew Wakefield proving Royal Free lied above
Sir Mark Pepys needed a fake scandal to make his employees’ fraudulent retraction of the Wakefield paper’s interpretation seem legit. So he made the hospital release a bogus statement that lead author and ex-employee Dr. Andrew Wakefield had an undisclosed conflict of interest. Pepys also leaked medical records of children in Dr. Wakefield’s paper to a freelance writer who could claim credit for the allegation.
The Royal Free’s statement and the hospital employees’ imminent retraction pressured The Lancet editor to sign onto the lie that Dr. Wakefield had a secret conflict of interest. But the lie that the hospital didn’t know about the “conflict” would unravel the day the allegation was made. The lie the journal didn’t know would unravel that week.
Wakefield and two brave coauthors responded that he disclosed his litigation involvement in the journal six years earlier. Horton rejected the disclosure with a completely contradictory excuse:
We do not accept Andrew Wakefield and colleagues’ interpretation of the letter
Yet Horton then acknowledged (boldface mine):
[Wakefield’s] letter was written in response to a letter from Dr A Rouse, published in the same issue. Dr Rouse’s letter raised concerns about whether children investigated in the 1998 paper had been referred to the authors by the Society for the Autistically Handicapped, and simply mentioned that his concerns arose out of a fact sheet produced by a firm of solicitors.
Right after Dr. Wakefield was acknowledged by the editor as discussing the period before publication, he completely contradicted himself (boldface mine):
Although the letter made it clear that Dr Wakefield “has agreed to help evaluate” some children for the Legal Aid Board, it does not indicate that in fact such work had been commissioned and was being undertaken well before the 1998 paper was published.
Wakefield disclosing the work was done in a discussion about the time period before publication does not indicate the work was done before publication? Is “has agreed” not past tense? Horton makes no sense, because he lied. Liars make no sense.
Unfortunately, it didn’t matter by then because the Wakefield turncoat coauthors already announced their fraudulent retraction. Never mind that the Lancet editor’s story completely fell apart, as did the Royal Free Hospital’s. Never mind that the interpretation’s own retraction also made no mention of Wakefield’s litigation involvement which was already known to its senior authors. Instead, they cited lead turncoat author’s prior defense of vaccines that began months in advance. That’s because the retraction was, as Wakefield predicted, planned months in advance.
Correction: This post previously said that the lie The Lancet didn’t know about Wakefield’s litigation ties would unravel in “the ensuing months.” It actually unraveled the week of the lie. The wording has been changed and the new words hyperlink to the British newspaper article, MMR scientist did not hide link with legal case, letter reveals.
“ARGUABLY THE FINEST PRIVATE COLLECTION OF CHILDRENS MEDICAL RECORDS..” -Cartoon satirizing a photo of freelance writer Brian Deer, http://adversevaccinereaction.blogspot.com/
“I know the names and family backgrounds of all 12 of the children enrolled in the study, including the child enrolled from the United States.” –Brian Deer on children seen at London’s Royal Free Hospital, BMJ, 2010
“Brian Deer has done an excellent job.” – Royal Free’s Head of Medicine Dr. Mark Pepys, BBC Radio, 2011
As you would expect from a doctor who cares nothing for patient safety, Dr. Mark Pepys does not care about patient confidentiality either. He has praised the freelance writer who obtained confidential medical information about patients seen at Pepys’ own hospital. Dr. Pepys even allowed that writer to quote him divulging information he had promised to keep secret.
The writer Pepys praised, Brian Deer, had no right to the names or family backgrounds of any of those children. That didn’t phase Mark Pepys who agreed to be interviewed by him.
Even worse, Pepys was the Head of Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital when Deer obtained confidential information on patients seen there. No investigation as to how that happened was ever launched. Instead, the Royal Free “investigated” doctors who saw the children including Dr. Andrew Wakefield.
Mark Pepys is 100% responsible for all leaks of patient information to the media, given his position at Royal Free. In his interview with Brian Deer, Pepys revealed he had no respect for confidentiality by leaking conditions for the departure of Dr. Wakefield from the hospital staff:
“one of the conditions of him going away was that I wasn’t supposed to say anything critical of him to anybody, for ever after.”
That condition wasn’t kept by GlaxoSmithKline’s designated “superstar.”
Any patient who enrolls in Sir Mark Pepys’ GlaxoSmithKline trials should know that Sir Leaksalot will sell out both their safety and their privacy for commercial gain.
“His laboratory is under threat. He has failed to gain due promotion. He has been strongly advised to withdraw from scientific publications that involve any mention of my name or association with MMR and bowel disease.” – Dr. Andrew Wakefield on Turncoat Simon Murch, The Guardian, November 1, 2003
10 coauthors fraudulently retracted the interpretation from the Wakefield autism-vaccine paper. Seven were still working for the hospital that fired him when they signed their names to the retraction. They include lead turncoat author Simon Murch, who used his hospital email address in the retraction. His retraction was predicted by lead author Andrew Wakefield in the above quote to a British newspaper four months prior. That was when Murch began campaigning for vaccines.
Who was pressuring Murch according to Wakefield? “the hierarchy of the Royal Free and the medical school,” which already fired Wakefield for his research two years prior. At the time, the medical school denied influencing Murch’s opinion on vaccines:
“The school believes that Dr Murch’s rejection of any association between MMR and autism is his considered professional judgement as a paediatrician and a researcher.”
Curiously, however, the school did not respond to the allegation that Murch was being pressured to withdraw his name from Wakefield papers. The medical school denied that it was withdrawing treatment from sick children instead:
“In addition, the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust completely refutes the suggestion that the trust is considering withdrawing treatment from children. The trust intends to continue to provide this important service and has no plans to reduce or withhold treatment from these children.”
That’s because its real plans were withdrawing its employees names from the interpretation of the landmark autism-vaccine paper. Four months later, that’s exactly what happened.
Before the 10 coauthors’ retraction, the letter by Peter Harvey shared on Autism Investigated defended the Wakefield paper from earlier attacks from lead turncoat Simon Murch. Murch’s attacks were made in a series of letters to The Lancet, the first of which was published in November 2003.
His first letter was a response to a September letter by doctors unconnected to the Wakefield paper describing two children who developed measles encephalitis. Both had been vaccinated.
many epidemiological studies have been undertaken, the results of which indicate no causal relation. No other vaccine has ever been studied in such depth, and the evidence for its overall safety is comprehensive.
There is now unequivocal evidence that MMR is not a risk factor for autism—this statement is not spin or medical conspiracy, but reflects an unprecedented volume of medical study on a worldwide basis. By any rational standards of risk/benefit calculation, it is an illogical and potentially dangerous mistake for parents to be prepared to take their children in a car on the motorway or in an aeroplane on holiday, but not to protect them with the MMR vaccine. An unprotected child is not only at personal danger, but represents a potential hazard to others, including unborn children. Unless vaccine uptake improves rapidly, major measles epidemics are likely in the UK this winter.
It was that letter that Dr. Harvey would later respond to, as would autism parent David Thrower. Their responses would be published in the February 14th issue of The Lancet. That was the week before the journal’s editor stated that he wished he censored vaccination from the Wakefield paper and two weeks before the interpretation retraction. A follow-up letter by Murch responding to Thrower and Dr. Harvey was published in the same issue as their letters.
In Murch’s letter, he doubled down on his previous stupidity. His biggest problem with the government’s attack on autism research was not because of the threat to said research, but because of its bolstering the “anti-MMR [vaccine] lobby”:
That some regulatory authorities ridiculed all aspects of these studies is unfortunate because it has allowed confirmation of the intestinal lesion to be appropriated by the anti-MMR lobby.
Then in a truly Orwellian move, Murch compares criticizing the tobacco science of the vaccine industry to tobacco industry science!
Thrower’s suggested tactic, in which every study that shows an unwanted outcome is destruction-tested from a hostile viewpoint, is essentially that used for years by the tobacco industry.
Measles in the gut? No big deal!
If traces of measles virus indeed prove to be detectable in 90% of cases, it surely cannot be causal, since such numbers of children would show up on the crudest epidemiological assessment.
Finally, Murch justifies use of the MMR vaccine with no alternative:
I see families in my clinic almost every week who have given their children single measles vaccine. Those who have gone on to give rubella and mumps vaccines are in the minority, months and sometimes years later. That is the heart of the issue. Personal choice cannot extend to compromising the safety of other people’s children.
The day before Murch’s 2003 letter was published, he scooped his support of the MMR vaccine to a major UK television network.
Throughout this same period, Murch also claimed he had no financial interest. As you will all see, that wasn’t true either.
I too write as a co-author of the Lancet paper of 1998 referred to by Simon Murch in his letter.1Statements in this letter cannot be allowed to pass without comment. There is a growing body of scientific evidence to show a relation between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, enterocolitis, ileocolonic lymphoid nodular hyperplasia, and autism.
The histologically unique condition ileocolonic lymphoid nodular hyper-plasia, which is not a normal variant,2,3 is associated with a diffuse entero-colitis. There are significant immunological and inflammatory abnormalities specific to this condition.4–12
There is evidence that affected children absorb undigested peptides with opioid properties,13and that the most powerful of these opioids are derived from casein and gluten. Exclusion of casein and gluten from the diet has proven beneficial effects on autistic children’s behaviour.14
Evidence of persistent measles virus infection in the gut has been identified.15,16 The virus identified in most of these children was shown to be consistent with the measles virus RNA from the MMR vaccine.17 These children also have measles virus RNA in the blood, which is also consistent with that of the MMR strain.16 Measles virus RNA has also been detected in the spinal fluid of 19 of 28 children with regressive autism and bowel disease and in one of 37 control samples (unpublished data).
Much is made of the epidemiological studies that have failed to show an association between MMR and autism. However, these studies are open to serious criticism.18,19
Murch was a co-author on 11 of the 17 peer-reviewed publications and presentations that I cite. These present a step-by-step cascade of evidence starting with the recognition of the clinical condition, followed by the pathology of the gut disease, the immunological and inflammatory abnormalities, the identification of measles RNA in the gut, blood, and cerebrospinal fluid, and subsequent identification of this RNA as being consistent with MMR virus.
I am an adult neurologist, not a paediatrician, not a gastroenterologist, and not an immunologist. Even so, taking a dispassionate and wide view of the published and unpublished information, I think there is increasingly compelling evidence for a causative link between the MMR vaccine, a unique gastrointestinal disease, and regressive autism.
I examined the original cohort of children, and they had no physical neurological abnormalities. I have recently seen one of them again. His behaviour is much worse, at times being uncontrollable. He has developed epilepsy and bilateral extensor plantar responses.
The problem now is to identify the numbers of children involved, and the susceptibility factors. In the meantime, consideration should be given to offering children single-injection measles vaccinations.
Interviewer: “Professor, how serious is this condition?”
Dr. Harvey: “I’m a doctor, not a professor.”
Interviewer: “I beg your pardon.”
Dr. Harvey: “That’s alright. It’s called ‘less majesty.'”
Dr. Peter Harvey was one of just three coauthors of the 1998 autism-vaccine paper to stand by the possibility of a link. He passed away in France in 2012.
At the time of his passing, the editor remarked:
“We need more doctors and scientists like Dr. Peter Harvey. His passing is a huge loss to the autism community.”
The comment was beneath Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s obituary for Peter Harvey when he died in 2012:
“As a consultant neurologist at the Royal Free Hospital, London, Peter Harvey was one of thirteen authors on the 1998 Lancet paper that first drew attention to the link between autism and bowel disease. Not once in all the time that has passed and the trouble that has flowed did he waiver in his support for the parents of those children, the conviction that their story of regression following MMR vaccination is valid, and the findings reported in that paper. In a saga of calumny, cowardice, and capitulation, Peter was resolute unto his death. Peter died at his house in Valboulet – Valley of Balls – France, where his ashes are scattered. Never was a last resting place more aptly named.”
But nothing does more justice to the legacy of Dr. Harvey like Dr. Harvey himself. Watch this 2007 interview he did on blast injuries to soldiers.
The two senior non-professor authors stood by the entire paper and the two senior professor authors didn’t. What does that tell you about professors?
The Facebook page dedicated to turncoat Professor John Walker-Smith should be removed and replaced with a memorial to Dr. Harvey.
John Walker-Smith is the most senior turncoat author of the 1998 landmark autism-vaccine paper to retract his name from the interpretation that vaccines may cause autism. Yet, there remains a Facebook page in his honor dedicated by parents of the vaccine-injured children he betrayed. It stands at 1,301 likes strong. It should fold immediately.
The page was set up to support John Walker-Smith against disciplinary findings against him and two coauthors. However, the entire event was a show trial that deliberately targeted the doctors for scrutinizing a vaccine. The whole hearing should have been boycotted by everyone, including by lead author Andrew Wakefield.
But people showed up to support not only Wakefield, but Walker-Smith and lead turncoat author Simon Murch too. Walker-Smith and Murch were greeted with flowers and hugs.
Why? Walker-Smith and Murch may have been caring doctors at one time, but all the good they did was undone by their interpretation “retraction.”
Why is Age of Autism’s John Stone friends with John Walker-Smith on Facebook? Why did Stone use his platform to hock both Walker-Smith’s and lead turncoat author Simon Murch’s books? He has not responded to Autism Investigated’s criticism, nor has the Walker-Smith Facebook group.
The Wakefield turncoat doctors deserve no accolades, only scorn.
