Anti-SLAPP suit against Andrew Wakefield

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Michael

Andrew Wakefield is a disgraced doctor who made up data that questioned the safety of vaccines. As a result, many parents refused to vaccinate their kids, especially in the U.K. Arguably, children died as a result. Andrew Wakefield is clearly a dangerous man and I’m glad that the scientific community has firmly rejected his nonsense. In fact, certain scientific journals and people even outside the scientific community have been quite critical. These include the British Medical Journal and journalistic Brian Deer. In response, Wakefield sued them for defamation. Now they are countering with an anti-SLAPP motion:

The anti-SLAPP statute protects journalists and publishers from baseless libel claims like Dr. Wakefield’s by providing for a special “motion to dismiss” to be filed at the outset of the case. To avoid dismissal, the plaintiff must submit “clear and specific evidence” to support each essential element of his claims. Where, as here, the plaintiff cannot satisfy that burden, the Court must dismiss the case and award the defendants their reasonable fees and costs, along with any additional sanctions appropriate to deter the plaintiff from filing similar actions.

This is what would have happened to Christopher Maloney had he been foolish enough to continue. Now the onus is on Wakefield to prove that he has actually been defamed. And, of course, he is unlikely to succeed. I hope this costs him a lot of money – and, more so, supporters.

via Popehat.

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More deaths because of anti-vax crowd

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Michael

Good job, assholes:

Europe, especially France, has been hit by a major outbreak of measles, which the U.N. health agency is blaming on the failure to vaccinate all children.

The World Health Organization said Thursday that France had 4,937 reported cases of measles between January and March — compared with 5,090 cases during all of 2010. In all, more than 6,500 cases have been reported in 33 European nations…

WHO has found that young people between 10 and 19 have not been getting immunized as they should, she said.

To prevent measles outbreaks, officials need to vaccinate about 90 percent of the population. But vaccination rates across Europe have been patchy in recent years and have never fully recovered from a discredited 1998 British study linking the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. Parents abandoned the vaccine in droves and vaccination rates for parts of the U.K. dropped to about 50 percent.

That discredited 1998 study comes from fraud Andrew Wakefield. His honesty in science is at about the level of a global warming denier and creationists. Yet despite that – and despite all the deaths he has caused – he is still viewed as some great savior.

Of course, we can’t blame him 100%. Maybe 97.4%, but not 100%. The media has a hand in all this, too. Whenever any outlet talks about vaccines, they almost always allow kooks to have a place at the table. It’s outrageous. These kooks present highly selective statistics, distort tiny, inconclusive studies, and scaremonger. I’ve seen it locally and nationally. In fact, the only news organization of note that I ever see take these liars to task is CNN, and even then not always. Anderson Cooper seems to be the only person around who has any balls on the matter.

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An elaborate fraud

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Michael

Andrew Wakefield is the disgraced research who claimed to have found a link between vaccines and autism in a 1998 study. This resulted in many deaths, increased illness, and his removal from the medical register in the U.K. Now a little investigative journalism has found that Wakefield outright made up a lot of his data.

A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.

The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield’s paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children’s parents.

And then children died because of Andrew Wakefield. I wonder when the public will get an apology from the media for promoting this pure horseshit? I’m not holding my breath.

In an accompanying editorial, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee and colleagues called Wakefield’s study “an elaborate fraud.” They said Wakefield’s work in other journals should be examined to see if it should be retracted.

I only include this because I had a different original source, so I hadn’t read this part of the article when I made the title to this post. I guess it’s just the most accurate way of describing the work of Andrew Wakefield.

Update: via PZ, watch Anderson Cooper engage in some responsible journalism by not letting Wakefield off the hook.

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Anti-vaccine nut gets nuts chopped

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Michael

Andrew Wakefield has helped to contribute to the death of children and the rise of a disease that was practically extinct. He did this by promoting unethical research which contributed to unfounded fears that linked autism and other diseases to vaccines. Fortunately, unlike Christopher Maloney, Wakefield’s irresponsible message about vaccines can be regulated more efficiently and effectively because he is a real doctor.

After nearly three years of formal investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC), Dr Wakefield has been found guilty of serious professional misconduct over “unethical” research that sparked unfounded fears that the vaccine was linked to bowel disease and autism.

Parents were advised yesterday that it was “never too late” to give their children the triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella, as the case drew to a close.

He has been struck off the medical register in the U.K. over his abuse of science now, but he’s still an unfortunately powerful figure. The hostility towards science demonstrated by the anti-vaccine crowd goes beyond this one quack. One can only hope this issue is big enough news to bring the vaccine rates back to their pre-Wakefield levels (they dropped near 50% for certain vaccines early in the last decade in the U.K.).

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