I wonder what Andrew Wakefield been up to recently?

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Wakefield is the doctor whose medical license was revoked in the UK following his fraudulent "study" in which he linked the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine to autism. He is essentially the Father of the Modern Anti-Vaccine Movement.

[After losing his medical license in the U.K., he immigrated to the U.S.] And he's been welcomed with open arms in Texas. According to a new report in Australian media, "the rate of Texan children exempted from at least one vaccine had surged by a staggering 1,900 per cent since Wakefield's arrival."

But that's not all! Wakefield is also promoting a variety of anti-vaccine groups... for a price, of course. In 2018, The Guardian wrote:

"Wakefield's most substantial contribution to Texas appears to be the network of autism-related charities and businesses he has been affiliated with, and in some instances drew six-figure salaries from, from the early 2000s onwards."

In other words, scaring parents away from vaccinating their children is a way for Wakefield to make himself filthy rich. Apparently not content with blood money, the disgraced doctor is now trying to get anti-vaccine politicians elected to the Texas legislature.

Wakefield has thrown his support behind Texans for Vaccine Choice, a group whose mission is to elect anti-vaccine candidates. The website has a report card for members of the Texas legislature. Candidates who support "vaccine choice" (which is a nice way of saying "anti-vaxxer") are given A's, while pro-vaccine candidates are given F's. Lovely.

Conveniently, the website also provides a how-to guide on getting a vaccine exemption. Even lovelier.

Last year, 82,000 Europeans contracted measles, 72 of whom died. In Madagascar, a measles outbreak that began in September 2018 has sickened 68,000 and killed more than 900. Measles outbreaks are also occurring across the United States.

Source: Andrew Wakefield Helps Elect Anti-Vaccine Politicians In Texas

From Wikipedia...

At least one of our members here lives "near Austin" as well, and his posts imply a general atmosphere of Anti-Autism sentiment. I wonder if there is a connection between this sentiment and Wakefield's presence.

Didn't he have some thing with a bunch of homeopaths a few years back?

Unfortunately, talking to anti-vaxxers is akin to what Heinlein once said about teaching a pig to sing. I have personal experience, since my youngest brother and his wife, who have a son and a daughter that are low functioning and mostly non-verbal, will not listen to any one criticizing anyone in the anti-Vaxxer community. I know they were performing chelation on those two, plus her son by another man, who suffers from a non recognized condition called PANDAS (he gets OCD when he contracts streph throat), in addition to herself and my brother, both of who are NT. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were doing the bleach enemas. I don’t know because, they, like my other 2 brothers, have told me i’m Persona non grata. If I come on their property, even in passing, they will call the local gestapo, er, constabulary and have me arrested and convicted for trespassing.

I wonder how they will act 10 to 20 years from now when they finally realize (if they do) that none of the quack "cures" they've tried have improved their children's conditions. I wonder how they would react to one of their kids contracting and dying from a disease that can be prevented by receiving a vaccine.

I wonder if they would go ape-shirt/bat-shirt crazy after you say "I told you so".

They would come back that is the Will of God. They are ultra conservative religious nut job screaming Southern Primitive Baptists (you know, those like the Pentecostals that handle timber rattlesnakes in their services, praying to YHWH will protect them from invenomation.) Besides, last I heard, he was offered his job back from R. R. Donnelly, after he was laid off, but he would have to take the job in their Nebraska facility.

And they call this Missouri Synod Lutheran craze and insane? His wife totally ostracized me for even being awarded SSDI 7 years ago, due to mental defect. I got called everything but white. The only place I belonged, according to her, was the gutter with the drunks, drug addicts, mentally deranged, Johns and hookers. She rather I be dead than leech off SSDI, which she, like Raptor, considers SSI of any type to be theft.

And you wonder why i’m No longer on speaking terms with any of my brother’s and most of my relatives?

They will continue blame a big pharma-big government conspiracy for debilibratly causing autism and covering up the “real cure”

First and foremost is the claim that vaccinations cause autism.

This is flatly false.

This lie was perpetuated by a once-respected scientist turned money-grubbing charlatan who has been responsible for the unfathomable suffering of countless families across the United States.

Not vaccinating your child for medical reasons was almost unheard of by the late 1990s. But in 1998, with a single research paper, Andrew Wakefield created the modern anti-vaxxer movement. He convinced parents that the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine caused autism in their children. He did this through made-up science. He not only made up the numbers, but he also subjected 12 very vulnerable children to invasive and medically unnecessary tests.

The medical journal that published his findings in 1998, The Lancet, retracted the article. The United Kingdon's General Medical Council found Wakefield guilty of dishonesty and flouting ethics protocols.

But the damage had been done. In 2000, measles had been eliminated in the United States. But there has been a steady climb since, with over 1,276 confirmed cases this year.

This was Wakefield’s dream. He planned to make millions annually from the marketing of autism diagnosis kits and a new “safer” MMR vaccine. His lie, born out of greed, caused the suffering and, yes, the deaths, of many children.

To be clear: Scientists and medical professionals are now in total agreement that there is absolutely, positively zero evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

Let’s take a look at a second fear, that vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

The concern is children tend to dies of SIDS at the same time vaccines are given. But that’s because SIDS is defined as happening anytime before the child turns 1. And this has been true since way before vaccines were introduced. It’s the same as saying “eating bread causes car crashes since most drivers who crash their cars could probably be shown to have eaten bread within the past 24 hours.” This is simply a correlation. Children are young when they get vaccines, and they also happen to be young when SIDS occurs.

A third fear is that you could die from a reaction to the vaccine. That is true, there is a risk but look at the numbers. If you don’t get vaccinated and get measles, you have a 1 in 500 chance of death. But, if you get vaccinated, you have less than a 1 in 1 million chance of death from a reaction to the vaccine (i.e. less of a chance of dying from a vaccine complication than getting struck by lightning). Clearly, it is significantly less risky for your child to get vaccinated.

When you choose to not vaccinate your child, you aren’t just making that decision for yourself, you are making that choice for — and endangering — children who are too young to be vaccinated, who are on chemotherapy for cancer, and those who don’t have strong immune systems.

Source: Vaccinate your children — measles is back because fears and lies are trumping science

Andrew Wakefield is back in the news again. This time he is attacking the COVID-19 vaccines.

Andrew Wakefield, the godfather of the modern anti-vaccine movement, is spreading disinformation about the COVID vaccine, falsely claiming that the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna are a form of genetic engineering. Like all good liars, he mixes a tiny bit of truth into a sea of lies.

Andrew Wakefield is the disgraced former doctor who was kicked off the UK's medical register following his fraudulent research that claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. He is, in many ways, the godfather of the modern anti-vaccine movement.

As if he hasn't done enough damage already, he's back, this time spreading blatant disinformation about the COVID vaccines that utilize mRNA. (As a reminder, here's how an mRNA vaccine works.) A video of an interview with him on NewTube was circulating on Twitter.

Wakefield's Video

Let's dissect the lies. Like all good liars, he starts off well enough:

"Messenger RNA is an intermediary between the gene and the product, the protein. It's the protein that ultimately elicits the immune response."

So far, so good. Wakefield demonstrates a baseline understanding of Biology 101, namely that genes encode proteins via messenger RNA. But he quickly goes off the rails.

"By definition, an RNA vaccine isn't a vaccine at all because it doesn't elicit an immune response. It has to be turned into protein, and it's the protein in turn that creates the immune response."

Huh? Wakefield just said (correctly) that the RNA vaccine makes the cell produce a protein that elicits an immune response. Now, he says that the RNA vaccine isn't a real vaccine because it elicits an immune response indirectly rather than directly. This is nonsensical and self-contradictory. Regardless of mechanism, anything that intentionally elicits an immune response can be thought of as a vaccine.

"A messenger RNA vaccine is actually genetic engineering. That's what it is."

No, it's not. This is a gigantic lie. Wakefield is purposefully misusing the term "genetic engineering," which involves the permanent alteration of an organism's genetic material. That is accomplished by changing the DNA. Messenger RNA vaccines do not do that. Furthermore, there is no biologically plausible way for them to do that.

"What could possibly go wrong? You have cells in your own body that are producing protein to which your immune system is going to mount an immune response. That's called an autoimmune disease."

NO. This is another monumental lie. An autoimmune disease occurs when the immune system attacks your own body. The mRNA vaccines elicit an immune response that attacks the coronavirus, not your body. Wakefield is again misusing a well-understood term.

"The potential for this to go horribly wrong is enormous."

That's true for any vaccine. It's also why we do clinical trials. Each approved vaccine so far has undergone Phase III trials that involved well over 30,000 people. (Compare that to the 12 volunteers used in Wakefield's fraudulent vaccine-autism paper.)

"We're already seeing some major problems occurring... there have been deaths that have just been reported."

Another incredible lie. Yes, deaths occurred, but they had nothing to do with the vaccines. Four of the deaths were in the placebo group and only two were in the vaccine group. Why did the volunteers die? Because sometimes people die. These clinical trials involve 30,000+ people, so obviously some of them will die during the course of the experiment, especially if they enroll elderly people.

Imagine following a group of people who attended a Major League Baseball game. Very likely, a few of the people who attended will be dead within months of the game. Why? Because everybody attends baseball games, including elderly people, and sometimes people die. It had nothing to do with the baseball game. The same is true of large clinical trials.

"If it causes a problem -- a year, two years, five years down the line -- and it's already been given to billions of people worldwide, it's too late. You can't take it out. You can't switch it off. You can't stop it. It's in there."

Wrong again. Messenger RNA degrades very quickly, around 600 minutes (10 hours) in human cells. If it didn't, our cells would crank out too much protein. So, our cells get rid of mRNA molecules after they're no longer needed. The same is true of the mRNA used in the COVID vaccine.

"It's rather like Jurassic Park that is about to escape the island."

I'm done. I'm not even four minutes into this 10-minute video, and I risk suffering brain damage if I continue watching. Wakefield's commentary is right in line with his abhorrent behavior in regard to vaccines in the 1990s..

Source: Fraud Doctor Andrew Wakefield Now Lying About COVID RNA Vaccine

There is an interesting story related to the conspiracy theories generated by Andrew Wakefield. A pharmacist in Wisconsin bought into them and intentionally destroyed around 500 doses of the Moderna vaccine.

Police in Grafton, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee, arrested Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist Steven Brandenburg last week after 57 vials of the Moderna vaccine were removed from refrigeration, which officials say contained enough doses to inoculate more than 500 people. A detective wrote in a probable cause statement that Brandenburg, 46, is an admitted conspiracy theorist and that he told investigators he intentionally tried to ruin the vaccine because it could hurt people by changing their DNA.



According to an affidavit his wife filed [for divorce] on Dec. 30 -- the same day Brandenburg was arrested in the vaccine tampering -- he had stopped at her house on Dec. 6 and dropped off a water purifier and two 30-day supplies of food, telling her that the world was "crashing down" and she was in denial. He said the government was planning cyberattacks and was going to shut down the power grid. She added that he was storing food in bulk along with guns in rental units and she no longer felt safe around him. A court commissioner on Monday found that Brandenburg’s children were in imminent danger and temporarily prohibited them from staying with him.

One of the earliest false claims suggested that the vaccines could alter DNA. Experts have said there is no truth to the claims that the vaccines can genetically modify humans.

Source: Wisconsin pharmacist suspected of trying to spoil COVID-19 vaccines thought they would alter DNA, docs say

First we have Anthony Quinn Warner, a conspiracy theorist, detonating a bomb in Nashville, Tennessee. Now we have a pharmacist destroying vials of vaccine in Wisconsin all based on conspiracy theories. I wonder if this virus somehow has a side-effect of making people C-R-A-Z-Y ?