Michael Fitzpatrick is a general practitioner and autism parent in the U.K. who has been countering misinformation for over a decade. His books include Defeating Autism: A Damaging Delusion and MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know. Dr. Fitzpatrick offered to take Andrew Wakefield’s recent challenge for a public debate. Mr. Wakefield has not responded.
One report of a replication of key finding by Andrew Wakefield’s team was presented at an IMFAR conference in 2006but never published. Even though it has not been published, and has in fact failed to replicate, that work by Steve Walker is often cited by Mr. Wakefield’s supporters.
Below are a series of points Dr. Fitzpatrick has collected in regards to the Walker study.
—
Matt Carey
———-
‘It [the Children’s Immunisation Centre – offering single measles vaccines] argues that the MMR vaccine can cause autism, saying: ‘In 2009 a Dr Walker in the USA studied 275 autistic children and found in a large percentage of cases that these children had the live measles virus in their gut after vaccination with the triple MMR’.Sunday Times, 21 April 2013.
1. In 2006 Dr Stephen Walker presented a poster at the Montreal IMFAR meeting claiming to have identified measles virus in intestinal biopsies of children with autism. These preliminary, provisional, unconfirmed, non-peer-reviewed findings in an uncontrolled study (which does not mention MMR) were widely reported – and enthusiastically acclaimed by Dr Andrew Wakefield.
http://www.autism-insar.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=82
2. In a subsequent statement issued by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, Walker denied that he had shown any link between measles virus and autism.http://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2006/Wake_Forest_Researcher_Warns_Against_Making_Connection_Between_Presence_of_Measles_Virus_and_Autism.htm
3. The Walker study has never been published.
4. The Walker study was dismissed as evidence in the 2009 Omnibus Autism Proceedings in the USA after a detailed critique by expert witnesses.http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2011/01/the-daily-mail-uk-continuing-sorry-contribution-to-fear-uncertainty-and-doubt-vaccine-fears.html
5. The Walker study is not included in a recent list of ‘28 studies from around the world that support Dr Wakefield’s work’ (though none of these validate his claim of a link between MMR and autism).
New Published Study Verifies Andrew Wakefield’s Research on Autism – Again
6. Though reports claimed that the Walker study had ‘replicated’ the work of Wakefield’s Dublin collaborator John O’Leary published in 2002, this work has been thoroughly discredited, most comprehensively by Professor Stephen Bustin (and is no longer even claimed by Wakefield in his support).
(Stephen A Bustin, Why There Is No Link Between Measles Virus and Autism, DOI: 10.5772/52844)
7. A co-author on the 2006 Walker study (and on his recent, unrelated, 2013 publication) is Dr Arthur Krigsman, a long-standing colleague and supporter of Dr Wakefield (and collaborator in his current Autism Media Channel initiative). http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0058058
Observations on Dr Krigsman by the ‘Special Masters’ in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings 2009:
‘After studying the extensive evidence in this case for many months, I am convinced that the reports and advice given to the Cedillos by Dr Krigsman and some other physicians, advising the Cedillos that there is a causal connection between Michelle’s MMR vaccination and her chronic conditions have been very wrong. Unfortunately, the Cedillos have been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment.’
Dr Krigsman appeared as both expert witness and as ‘treating physician’ to Michelle Cedillo and Colten Snyder. The special masters found that his credentials were ‘scant’ and noted that though he claimed to be ‘assistant clinical professor’ at New York University he had never taught there. His four publications were reduced on inquiry to one. It emerged that he left New York following disciplinary action at his former hospital and was fined $5,000 on arrival in Texas for misrepresenting his registration status.
The special masters were not impressed by Dr Krigsman’s performance as an expert witness. Hastings commented that in the Cedillo case he ‘did not find Dr Krigsman to be an expert upon whom I could reasonably rely for sound opinion and judgment’.
It was in relation to his personal testimony as Michelle’s doctor that Hastings found Dr Krigsman to be most ‘unpersuasive’ and of ‘doubtful credibility’. He was shocked to discover that he had ‘presented an opinion concerning Michelle’s case either without examining Michelle’s medical records at all, or after badly misreading these records’. He noted that Dr Krigsman had ‘diagnosed Michelle with “inflammatory bowel disease” in July of 2003, before he had even met and examined her’. Hastings further noted that ‘Dr Krigsman seems highly inclined to diagnose the presence of gastrointestinal inflammation on the basis of almost any chronic gastrointestinal symptoms’. He concluded that Dr Krigsman had advanced a ‘grossly mistaken understanding of Michelle’s gastrointestinal symptoms’ and that ‘a simple reading of Michelle’s medical records demonstrates that Dr Krigsman’s understanding was clearly wrong’. Michelle endured five upper gastrointestinal endoscopies and three lower gastrointestinal endoscopies, none of which in the opinion of the respondent’s experts, revealed inflammatory bowel disease.
http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/6283/
—
Michael Fitzpatrick 23 April 2013
Left Brain Right Brain 
I’m an adult and was traumatised by the combined endoscopy and colonoscopy I endured just over a year ago. I’m an adult who understood what was going on and why, and I still shake and feel sick if I give it any thought.
To do that repeatedly, and unnecessarily, to Michelle deserves an assault charge. They aren’t benign procedures, they run serious risks with potentially fatal side effects.
He should be locked up.
Indeed.
One of the autistic kids investigated by the Royal Free hospital in Wakefield/Walker Smith’s unit suffered multiple bowel perforations and nearly died in the ITU, suffering permanent sequelae. He received compensation (coincidentally about the same amount Wakefield made from his own role in the MMR litigation).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-500659/500-000-payout-autistic-boy-left-fighting-life-used-MMR-guinea-pig.html
They had consent for the procedures. Evidence of this consent was repeatedly offered at the hearings into Wakfields case, but was ignored and not recognised each time it was presented. Deers research cannot be trusted. In fact he committed fraud himself in the process of his investigation. It was a witch hunt, and it delayed the research to gut conditions of autistic children and also the recognition of the gut brain connection.
“and it delayed the research to gut conditions of autistic children and also the recognition of the gut brain connection.”
You want to know what has delayed research in the GI conditions in autistics? Andrew Wakefield. By tying GI diseases in autistics to the MMR vaccine (incorrect and unethical and fraudulent), Mr. Wakefield put off many from investigating GI disease.
Had Mr. Wakefield focused on GI disease and not the MMR, he could have done something good. Instead he just did bad.
prada メンズ
“”5. The Walker study is not included in a recent list of ‘28 studies from around the world that support Dr Wakefield’s work’ (though none of these validate his claim of a link between MMR and autism).”
IT WAS NEVER WAKEFIELD S CLAME THAT MMR “CAUSED” AUTISM. His team reported a potential link and they responsibly suggested further study. This was not a conclusion. His paper was looking at gut conditions of Autistic children.On one hand you deride misinformation yet perpetuate myths yourself.
So why do you make the point of bringing up such a bogus point that had very little to do with Wakefield’s research?
So has Wakefield’s actual work on the gut been replicated???
Thats his teams actual work, not some bogus “claim” that others have misreported and exaggerated beyond reality.
And why has it taken so so long for gut disorders in Autistic children to be taken seriously?
Now that science is finally catching up with the direct gut brain connection….
PS The lancet is published by Elsevier … Elsevier is directly tied to GlaxoSmithKlein … Do a blog on that conflict of interest and massive fraud… Wakefields paper was not withdrawn on scientific grounds.
“IT WAS NEVER WAKEFIELD S CLAME THAT MMR “CAUSED” AUTISM.”
Then why did he make that claim at his video press conference announcing his now retracted paper? Why does he continue to be the darling of several anti-vaccine groups?
” His team reported a potential link and they responsibly suggested further study.”
Then why did he refuse to do those follow up studies when the Royal Free offered him more time and money? Why did he just leave? And what about the results of the fellow at the Royal Free who actually did those studies:
Lancet 1999;353 (9169):2026-9
Autism and Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine: No Epidemiological Evidence for a Causal Association.
BMJ 2002; 324(7334):393-6
Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Bowel Problems or Developmental Regression in Children with Autism: Population Study.
“So has Wakefield’s actual work on the gut been replicated???”
No. Even by someone who was once paid by SafeMinds to show thimerosal caused autistic mice (except no one knows what autistic mice look like, and the actual results showed what commonly happens to stressed over crowded mice):
PLoS ONE 2008; 3(9): e3140 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003140
Lack of Association between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism with Enteropathy: A Case-Control Study
“Wakefields paper was not withdrawn on scientific grounds.”
It was withdrawn due to several violations on the use of children in human health studies, fraud, undisclosed conflicts of interest (he was paid by lawyers to do it) and generally really bad science.
Now here is a question for you: The MMR vaccine was approved in the USA in 1971. So it had been in use for about two decades in a much larger country than the UK before Wakefield came on to the scene. What documentation shows there was a steep uptick of autism in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s due to the use of the MMR vaccine?
Please post the documentation dated before 1990 that there was a sharp increase in autism in the USA due to the use of the MMR. Because it is obvious that if there was a connection it would show up in a country that larger and using the vaccine longer than the UK.
I compiled a few such statements here.
From his patent application we have these two statements:
and
Here’s a statement from his sworn testimony before a congressional hearing
From the video for his press conference for the Lancet paper
and
In speaking about public health officials, those involved with vaccine policy and autism epidemiology:
From an interview discussing a later paper than the 1998 Lancet article:
From a BBC program in 2002
The idea that Mr. Wakefield never said MMR causes autism is nonsense. He says it directly, he says it indirectly.
So, perhaps you would be so kind as to apologize for “perpetuating a myth” as you accuse me of doing. One of us has actually done the research on this subject, as I’ve shown above.
Really? Who has replicated his work claiming that there is a persistent measles infection in the guts of autistics?
Did you notice the large study out of Sweden this year which showed that the GI diseases found in autistics is not inflammatory in nature? Mr. Wakefield’s thesis in multiple studies is that (a) the GI disease is unique to autistics and (b) inflammatory. It isn’t and it isn’t.
No, I haven’t heard this particular angle to the conspiracy theories surrounding Mr. Wakefield. Tell me, then, why did GSK publish the paper in the first place? Especially considering that even if it were correct, even if it were ethically performed, it was weak and had no place in such a high profile/high impact journal.
I’m so thankful I found your site. I think I heard you interviewed on Voices for Vaccines’ podcast. I found your site in a different way though. An anti-vax friend posted a list of studies from PubMed that suggested a link between autism and vaccines. I started googling the authors to see their credentials. Thank you for debunking a lot of authors and explaining why they aren’t reliable.