Parent of Autistic Child in Wakefield Study Says Key Journalist Got Facts Wrong

FALLS CHURCH, Va., Nov. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --  When reporter Dan Olmsted met with the father of an autistic boy whose medical history is central to a British Medical Journal article refuting the vaccine/autism link, Olmsted never expected to be shown a letter written by the boy's father that would reveal the facts of the BMJ article to be flagrantly false. In contrast to the article, the letter clearly reveals the plausibility of the boy's autism being caused by his MMR (combined measles, mumps, rubella live virus vaccination) as well as the father's belief that the shot caused his son's autism.

Today in Age of Autism, Olmsted's interview with this father of a boy with autism known only as "child 11" appears in Part 7 of the Elaborate Fraud series by Olmsted and Mark Blaxill, Age of Autism's Editor-At-Large. The contents of the letter mark another revelation in the controversy over the British Medical Journal's published report by freelance journalist Brian Deer who has received support from  MedicoLegal Investigations (MLI), a bureau affiliated with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) which specializes in bringing doctors before the General Medical Council, the UK's disciplinary body.

The father's 1997 letter was written to Dr. Wakefield, who had led a team of researchers in the controversial case study of 12 children with autism. Contrary to Deer's January report in the British Medical Journal, the chronology of Child 11's MMR shot and his subsequent autism diagnosis was inaccurately reported.  From Olmsted's article:

"When I showed Father 11 what Deer had written about the shot-and-symptoms sequence, he said, emphatically, 'That's not correct.'"

BMJ's fraud allegations against Wakefield derive from 2009 and were published in the Sunday Times six days after proprietor James Murdoch was appointed to the board of MMR manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline with a brief "to review…external issues that might have the potential for serious impact upon the group's  'reputation.'"

Dr Peter Fletcher, former Chief Scientific Officer at the UK Department of Health, said if it is proven that the jab causes autism, "the refusal by governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history".  

Contact: Ginger Taylor
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SOURCE Age of Autism