Vaccine Times: Russell Blaylock MD - The new Wakefield?

Is anyone taking bets on when this charlatan will be on some credulous TV show spouting off his nonsense?

The anti-vaxers’ ability to find real doctors to support their particular brand of quackery is admirable: think Dr. Jay Gordon, Andrew Wakefield and countless others. Someone I was not previously aware off joins the illustrious ranks; we are  introduced to Dr. Russell Blaylock M.D. In a recent tweet, Meryl “I’m not anti-vaccine I’m pro-safe-vaccine even though vaccines=rape” Dorey linked to an article ominously titled “If You Are In Support of Vaccinations, Read This If You Dare“, published at thehealthy- economist.com. Now, how could I be expected to resist a dare from thehealthy- economist? I had to read.

As the first sentence of the article shows, we’re in for quite a spectacle:

If you are in support of vaccinations, this well written, concise and compelling letter by world renowned neurologist Dr. Russell Blaylock MD will dismantle every single argument used to support this inhumane, barbaric practice.

Wow, he’s world-renowned and is going to dismantle every single argument supporting vaccinations in one letter. What could possibly go wrong with that? I’m sure a world-renowned neurologist won’t stoop to the tired, old, already debunked anti-vaccine talking points. No, this guy will present earth-shattering evidence, unassailable arguments that will just leave the rest of us in the pro-health community flabbergasted and speechless. Did I mention he’s a world-renowned neurologist?

Who is Russell Blaylock MD?

He’s not new to the pseudo-scientific world according to the Skeptics Dictionary. He’s been around for a while apparently dabbling in pseudo-scientific endeavors with regards to vaccines, cancer, and other woo lovers topics such as water fluoridation, teeth fillings, aspartame etc.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE.  It's a long one, but forewarned is forearmed.  And this nutter needs to be shown for what he is!

The Human Cost of Andrew Wakefield

For those who are unaware of this fine example of humanity, Andrew Wakefield was the doctor who was responsible for the shoddy piece of research that lead to the rumour that measles vaccines can cause autism. 

The MMR vaccine was the primary focus of the anti-vaccine stance since this was the vaccine that people believed PROVED a link between vaccination and illness. Turns out it did not. 

This has caused a rise in outbreaks across Europe and America particularly when measles sufferers have travelled from reservoirs of disease in the east. And this has come to haunt us. 

Currently there are 6500 cases across Europe, far higher than the national average. For instance in 2010 France has had 5090 cases. While between January to March this year there have been 4937 cases and rising. The same is seen in the UK with the sudden boom in cases reaching 330 cases. 

The fault lies in the lack of vaccination. It is clear and simple. Money that could have been saved by vaccination is now being spent ensuring these kids survive their disease without the harm that it can cause. Post Wakefield fewer children were vaccinated at one point dropping to nearly 50%, and more and more cases were seen until the current epidemic. 85% of the people are vaccinated but the disease is highly contagious with an infection rate of 90%. If you are un-vaccinated and run into a measles sufferer in the same area or having passed through the same area, then there is a 90% chance of catching the disease. 

The price people paid for measles was a high one. Modern technology has softened the blow but the blow is still there. Fewer people will be deaf or blind or have developmental disorders but this is a disease preventable by vaccination. The number and cost would have been a lot cheaper. 

The attitude of the anti-vaccine movement was like encouraging people to not wear seatbelts. Now the car has crashed. The question remains is whether we can contain the spread of a disease that is airborne or not before it costs us more lives. 

We need vaccination, and we need it now, before we pay the price in bodies rather than in Pounds and Euros. 

Just the Vax: Still no independent confirmation of Wakefield's claims

Sometimes people will not accept being wrong.  No matter how often they are told they are wrong, or how poorly they came up with their information.  It's well known that Wakefield not only lied and fabricated his data, but he also had a serious conflict of interest.  Yet people insist on saying that he was somehow right.  So a lot of people are spending a great deal of effort to continue to prove him wrong.  And a lot of other misguided folks think he was somehow right despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary...

Still no independent confirmation of Wakefield's claims

One of the things that anti-vaccines groups desperately want to have, is the scientific support for their claims. A lot of parents know that rigorous studies, peer reviewed, published in scientific journals and indexed on Pubmed are the standard in discussions about medical care. Therefore, the anti-vaccine brigade are trying to maintain that, really, countless scientific studies across the globe have shown that vaccines are bad for you.

The anti-vaccine, pro-any-conspiracy theory website Whale.to (the citation of which automatically invokes Skopie's Law), provides a neat shopping list that staunch supporters of the long debunked “MMR causes inflammation of the gut which somehow causes autism and Andrew Wakefield is really a hero” notion can use to spam evidence based discussions, as recently seen on the Shot of Prevention blog where Marsha McClelland of the “We the People United for Vaccine Education Misinformation” Yahoo group copied and pasted in support for Andrew Wakefield.

CLICK HERE FOR A LIST OF PAPERS THAT SHOW WAKEFIELD WAS AND IS STILL WRONG.

Palm Beach Post: Vaccine-autism link proved false?

Not sure why the Opinion Staff used a question mark in their title.  I think with the level of fraud and lying that was documented, it was never really a true question.  I urge you to go to the website and vote in the affirmative as far as the question is concerned.

Vaccine-autism link proved false?

by Opinion Staff


In 1998 British Dr. Andrew Wakefield published in The Lancet a study he said showed a link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.

That study, which included only 12 children, has been under scientific attack for years. Nevertheless, it caused some parents of autistic children to blame themselves and their pediatricians for using the vaccine. It caused other parents not to inoculate their children, leaving them at risk for the diseases – and for spreading the diseases to others.

Now the British Medical Journal has published a report it says shows the original study – which The Lancet eventually retracted – was not just wrong. It was, the journal says, a case of fraud.

Medical histories of all 12 children in the original study were altered to make the vaccine seem to blame for their autism. Timelines were blurred to make it seem that symptoms that showed up before the children were inoculated had not appeared until after the vaccines were administered.

We think the British Medical Journal’s report debunks once and for all the supposed link between autism and the MMR vaccine. But what do you think? Is the vaccine-autism link debunked? Take our poll.

Skeptics PWN Anti-Vax Scumbag Wakefield at His Own Rally

There is really nothing much I can add to this, so I will just paste it, and leave it be:

Skeptics PWN Anti-Vax Scumbag Wakefield at His Own Rally

Posted by mattusmaximus on May 27, 2010

**Update: Check out my follow-up post for more news, photos, and video of this event.
============
Well, congratulate me folks – I’m now officially part of a squad of skeptical ninjas
Today, there was an anti-vaccination rally in Chicago, and the king of anti-vax woo & nonsense – Andrew Wakefield himself – showed up. I suppose he decided to hang with his anti-vax homies here in the U.S. seeing as how he’s essentially lost his license to practice medicine in the United Kingdom because of his fraudulent work there.
Anyway, the new skeptical group I’m part of, the Women Thinking Free Foundation (WTFF), caught wind of this wave of woo headed our way (we’re based in Chicago) and we decided, with two days notice, to mobilize and counter protest… and we did! I did not personally attend the counter protest, as I had to teach today, but I and many others were working behind the scenes to help organize it.
The word went out like wildfire across the Internet – via email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and message boards – and we were able to gather a group of about 10 people there. In addition, our WTFF ninjas were able to hand out plenty of pro-vaccine literature to passers-by who might have otherwise thought that Wakefield and his ilk weren’t batcrap crazy. Here are some examples of our handouts we whipped up as part of WTFF’s new “Hug Me, I’m Vaccinated!” campaign…

It went really well. Apparently, a whopping 50-100 anti-vaxxers showed up; ironically, with just a couple of more days of prep & organization, we might have been able to have almost as many pro-science people there. In addition to handing out literature, our skeptical ninjas also took some photos & video, which I will share with you after it is all processed. Until then, I leave you with this little gem…

That’s Wakefield in the middle, unwittingly posing with two of our skeptical ninjas who infiltrated his rally. In fact, the girl is wearing a Surlyramics necklace that says “Hug Me, I’m Vaccinated!” and moments before this snapshot was taken she handed him a note. It said how much of a horrible person he is for spreading anti-vax nonsense and scaring people out of vaccinating their children. She told me that he didn’t look at it & just put it in his pocket, thinking that he got the phone number from some hot young lady. Here is the text of what she wrote:

Dear Andrew Wakefield,
I know that you truly believe that what you are doing is helping people and that the ends justify the means, but I just want you to know that the things you are doing – the actions you have taken in the past have hurt people – killed people. Your work has scared and manipulated parents into not vaccinating their children, putting them and their entire community at risk, all in the name of safety. Children have died because of you. I just want to make sure that you fully understand that.
Sincerely,
**********

Message to Wakefield and the anti-vax woosters:

Btw, we also got some press from a Chicago news outlet

I’m reasonably sure there will be more photos & video to follow. Watch this space for updates.

This whole affair was, in my humble opinion, an outstanding success. In this “Hug Me!” event, we have officially put Wakefield and his ilk on notice that anywhere they go, they’re likely to be confronted by skeptics who are willing to stand up to their nonsense & fear-mongering woo. We at WTFF hope that this event will serve as a template for other skeptical & pro-science groups to follow in monitoring & holding pseudoscientific folk like Wakefield accountable in the court of public opinion.

A bit of Wakefield Research

So over at the James Randi Educational Foundation, one of the users did a bit of research and dug up this interesting bit of information:

I just realized Brian Deer has posted page images of the entirety of Wakefield's original 1997 patent application for the so-called "measles vaccine" he was planning on making his fortune from, once he's discredited MMR. The final 1998 version is also there.

http://briandeer.com/wakefield/vaccine-patent.htm
http://briandeer.com/mmr/1998-vaccine-patent.pdf

It will make hilarious reading for all the biomedical scientists here. It's the whole goat colostrum transfer factor thing, which is utter woo from start to finish. It's dressed up as science, but he's really just dreamed up the whole thing on the back of the theorizing of a quack called Fudenberg.

This makes it quite clear that the project to market his product was well advanced before the controversial paper was even published. The money he was getting for investigating these children and supporting their legal actions was only the start of it, and frankly small beer to what he seems to have been expecting to make if the MMR had been withdrawn and his goat colostrum nostrum adopted instead.

So far as I know, no safety or efficacy testing was ever done on this snake-oil.

I also sort of wonder how many mice he envisaged using in the first stage of the manufacture, and then how many pregnant goats would have been needed to provide enough of this product for widespread use? What about the kids they produced, which would be surplus to requirements once born, and also vulnerable liabilities when deprived of their mothers' colostrum which the kids need to provide their own passive immunity. I presume they'd just be killed when they were born?

The mind boggles, frankly. I wonder what the animal rights people would make of it? Gadzillions of mice injected with measles and then killed, with their tissues then injected into huge herds of pregnant goats spread out all over the countryside, with their kids being killed at birth so that the mothers' colostrum can be harvested.

Wow.

And as I said, if anyone thinks that even taking colostrum by mouth is "safe and natural", google "bovine neonatal pancytopenia". Oh, but Wakefield wanted to inject the colostrum-derived product right into the children's bodies, just like a vaccine.

You know, maybe more details of what he was planning (and is actually doing on a small scale, I understand) need to be highlighted.

Rolfe.

If anyone had any doubt as to how much of a slimeball this Wakefield ass is, they really can't... And reading the rest of the thread is interesting as well (just click on the title of this post).