Why is there a resurgence of an eliminated disease? | #253
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Friends,
As we’ve discussed in our previous editions, the history of science, technology, and public influence is filled with brilliant minds whose contributions have had long lasting consequences.
We continue the series by talking about one man - whose action has led to a resurgence of a disease that was thought to have been eliminated in the western world. Today, we talk about Dr Andrew Wakefield.
Things we learnt this week 🤓
The modern anti-vaccine movement might have remained a fringe conspiracy theory if not for one man: Dr. Andrew Wakefield. A British gastroenterologist turned fraudster, Wakefield weaponized his medical credentials to concoct a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.
Born in 1956 to a family of physicians, he trained at London’s prestigious St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School and became a surgeon specializing in gastroenterology. By the 1990s, he had positioned himself as a maverick researcher at the Royal Free Hospital, investigating inflammatory bowel diseases.
In 1998, Wakefield published a study in The Lancet that would become a blueprint for scientific fraud. The paper, co-authored by 12 colleagues, described 12 children with developmental disorders and bowel symptoms, eight of whose parents allegedly linked their conditions to the MMR vaccine. The study’s design was flimsy - a case series with no control group - but Wakefield leveraged his credentials to stage a press conference, declaring the vaccine unsafe and urging parents to demand single-dose alternatives. The media frenzy that followed ignored a critical detail: Wakefield had been paid 400,000 pounds by lawyers suing vaccine manufacturers, a conflict of interest he concealed.
Wakefield’s claims were a dangerous remedy for a non-existent problem. His “research” was a house of cards:
Medical records revealed Wakefield altered patients’ histories to fit his narrative. For example, a child exhibited developmental delays before receiving the MMR vaccine, a fact omitted from the study
Children underwent invasive procedures-colonoscopies, lumbar punctures-without proper ethical approval. One child, vomiting and distressed, was sent home in a taxi after days of testing.
Wakefield patented a measles vaccine and diagnostic kits for his fabricated “autistic enterocolitis,” aiming to profit from the panic he’d engineered.
The General Medical Council (GMC) later condemned him for “callous disregard” for children’s suffering and “dishonesty” in manipulating data. By 2010, The Lancet retracted the paper, and Wakefield was stripped of his medical license.
It was too little too late. Wakefield’s lies infected global public health. MMR vaccination rates in the UK plummeted from 92% to 80%, triggering measles outbreaks that hospitalized thousands. In 2019, Europe reported over 10,000 measles cases, many fatal-a direct consequence of vaccine hesitancy. Wakefield, meanwhile, fled to the U.S., where he transformed into a celebrity anti-vaxxer, dining with surprise, surprise Donald Trump and dating supermodel Elle Macpherson.
Wakefield then made a documentary in 2016 called Vaxxed which reignited fears, despite being debunked as “bogus” by scientists. The result? Measles resurged in the U.S. in 2019, with cases hitting a 25-year high.
Wakefield didn’t just fool the world; he gave anti-science a prescription pad, and we’re all still paying the price.
From IWTK, with love 💌
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