A few of you (if you’re a Brit like me) may remember after the MMR debacle that articles in the Sunday Times and presented in a Channel 4 ‘Dispatches’ programme followed investigative journalist Brian Deer’s progress as he totally debunked Andrew Wakefields science to the point where the GMC (General Medical Council) will be investigating Wakefields fitness to practice medicine.
I came across this new entry on Brian Deer’s own site about Andrew Wakefield.
In it Mr Deer discusses the strange case of some disappearing pages from Thoughtful Houses’ (very prosaic) website. These pages related to biographies and speaking dates for two key board members Arthur Krigsman and Bryan Jepson – these two being essential components in Wakefield’s operation in both a medical and financial sense:
This looked like good business, but recent developments suggest that something in Austin has changed. In the middle of August 2005, the Thoughtful House website underwent dramatic reconfiguration. The “Mount Rushmore†line-up of Wakefield, Krigsman, Jepson and Granpeesheh, vanished from the welcome page. And previously extensive details of the Wakefield operation’s clinical services were replaced with: “This page is under constructionâ€.
Why is the disappearance of these two such an issue? Well because without them Wakefield can’t treat all the kids he insists come to him rather than get treated locally:
In short, it appears that Thoughtful House clinical services are on hold, with its advertised clinicians off the scene. What this means for parents, and more importantly, their children, will be reported as soon as we know.
The whole Thoughtful House venture seems somewhat off-course. Could it be that these two essential cogs in Wakefields scheme realised the ‘bullshit factor’ of what they’d signed up for?
aims to unravel what the Thoughtful House website described as Wakefield’s “discovery of autistic enterocolitisâ€. This discovery – an alleged gut inflammation distinctive to autism – has yet to be substantiated by any other group, despite parents widely believing that it has. Specialists in this field deny that any such distinctive condition exists, with even the influential paediatric endoscopist Dr Tim Buie of Harvard University, who treads the same conference circuit boards as Wakefield, saying that he has seen nothing specific to autistic children.
Go have a read of the whole thing. Its an absorbing piece.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Wakefield doesn’t have a medical license to practice in Texas, as far as the Texas licensing board’s website indicates today.
http://reg.tsbme.state.tx.us/OnLineVerif/Phys_NoticeVerif.asp?
It seems that Drs. Jepson, Kartzinel and Krigsman have been licensed just recently by the state of Texas.
Pooor Texans.
Interesting lead Kev, mind if I use it for the book I’m writing on neurodiversity and disability rights movement ?
Go for it – its all Brian Deer’s work, not mine so you might want to email him as a courtesy.
I looked, and I do bot think they have been licenced. The way I read the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners site is that they have applied for licenses, but these have not (yet) been granted. .
And please, if any of y’all live in Texas (reverting back to the accent I had from my two years of living there), do see what happened to the place. If you find out anything, forward it to Brian Deer.
In corresponding with him by email, I think he is a dear (sorry, could not resist the pun… and I am surely not the first one).
Also, I agree with Kevin… the whole MMR scandel site is a fascinating read. The http://briandeer.com/mmr/andrew-wakefield.htm shows what new pages are added, usually once or twice a week.
Hi,
I was wrong about them getting licensed, and very happy to be wrong about that. I was just stunned to see their names there and didn’t read closely.
So maybe something ugly came out in the process of them trying to get approved. I hear that the thoughtfulhouse fans were asked to send pleading letters to the Texas licensing board to get Dr. Krigsman licensed quickly. Maybe there was too much truth in one of those letters and it tipped off the board to look deeper into Krigsman’s practice.
Wakefiled isn’t licensed in Texas as you can see from that website. But he’s practicing medicine of some sort if he is asking to see people’s lab results. What does he do, tell Krigsman what to prescribe? Something smells rotted in Austin.
I think Krigsman is a quack, but only time will tell. Maybe he’ll lose his NY state license.
I am a health care professional in my career since 1989. I have known AW for six years. I have also had children in my own practice who were patients of Dr Krigsman. These men are not a quacks, they are highly qualified, experienced, and credentialed gastroenterologists who are bucking a broken, dangerous paradigm.
As I live in the US, not the UK, I have referred patients to Dr. Krigsman. I also referred several to Tim Buie at Mass Gen in Boston, who treated my own child. I would refer anyone to AW in a heartbeat. I have observed all these men for years in practice. I have observed them to be kind, well informed, and of high integrity with my referrals.
What boggles my mind is why there is a blog devoted to such pointless nonsense about these physicians. Have any of you met these individuals? Have you read ALL their papers (not just the abstracts), attended their lectures, reviewed their work (it is voluminous), observed them in practice, spoken with them personally,as I have? Or are you armchair experts, none with affected children, none in the health professions, none with expertise in pediatrics?
All have published peer reviewed work. I don’t know why this Brit Brian what’s-his-name says otherwise about Dr. Krigsman. He seems to have a pathological need to discredit these individuals, for what reason heaven only knows.
Plainly, Drs Krigsman and Buie must, in order to keep their posts, walk a fine line. The moment they openly blame any vaccine for the rise in autism, as AW has, they will be fired, as AW was. They choose to remain at their jobs where they may continue to influence this mess. They can see what happened to their colleague who trusted that science rules medicine, not politics and money.
What has happened to AW is simply proof that medicine is as corrupt as anything else, thanks to the pharmaceutical trade,which wields irresistable influence over doctors in practice. Anyone who sees it differently is in my opinion probably a simpleton who voted for George Bush.
Nice rebuttal of….well, nothing at all.
Your reading and comprehension skills seem to be on a par with your ability to judge people. Good for you, but a bit of a shame for your patients.
Could somebody please post references to anything written by Dr Krigsman, as I cannot find any. He appears to have no publications at all to his name. Also Dr Buie seems to have said that he disagrees with Dr Wakefield: this was in a BBC television interview.
I am not sure I understand, why people that are at least trying to help us out are always under attack by people whom probably just sit on there arsses all day and think up how to discredit people who are trying, they may not have all the answers, but who does?
Are you sure that Wakefield, Bradstreet, Haley and Buttar are actually trying to help you? Or do they just want your money?
Is Paul Shattuck trying to help or hinder?
Its easy to tell HN. Basically, anyone who agrees that any vaccine causes autism is ‘just trying to help’. Anyone who thinks otherwise is ‘just sitting on their arsses (sic) all day’.