Vaccines, and autism, a measured ... Reality.
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We don't really need to rely on heuristics, when we are able to evaluate the facts to begin with,
BUT:
If you believe the establishment:
The entire motive story just doesn’t add up. Andrew Wakefield had a thriving life before all this: a
well-paid (perhaps well into 6 figures salary), respected specialty practice, a beautiful home and
wife, a solid reputation, charity work that produced lots of funding for Chron's disease (that made it
in Newspapers), world class professional recognition, and stability. What, then, was there to gain?
Or more importantly, what did he lose? The answer is painfully clear: he lost almost everything. His
career, his reputation, his life in Britain, all for some elaborate fraud that, while imaginable in the
abstract, was totally incoherent and extraordinarily high-risk. We have to believe that he
deliberately set out to orchestrate a fraud where he planned to convince regulatory bodies like the
MHRA to approve a product based on a falsified disease pathology, despite the fact that such
agencies are claimed by the mainstream rhetoric, to be so incredibly effective at regulation. We
would also have to believe he could somehow persuade pharmaceutical companies and public
health officials (who specifically, adamantly recommended against single dose/alternative measles
vaccination or MMR alternatives) & MRHA to support a fraud that directly threatened their
established policy, profits and reputation, and that threatened peoples trust in vaccines (which was
essentially a sacred cow to them) and in medicine/public health more broadly.
Whether or not the litigants won the legal case against GSK, Wakefield would have been able to
make the same money, Wakefield wouldn't want this case to end quickly (or win) either, if anything
Wakefield would make more money by dragging out the case so he got more hourly payments
(any legal victories would only benefit the parents anyway, not Wakefield himself). His involvement
was highly publicized in Newspapers; he openly discussed litigation involvement, and research aims in newspapers and on television and in applications for approval for research to the Royal Free
Ethics Committee... So how on earth this can reconcile with the idea that he was hiding something,
is perplexing to imagine.
The scenario becomes even more completely impossible when you consider that Wakefield would
supposedly be simultaneously trying advance lawsuits that antagonized and threatened
pharmaceutical companies, and also, work with those pharmaceutical companies to get his
products manufactured? In reality, the companies would have no reason to support a scheme that
was designed to create fear and public distrust around major pharma products through a major
lawsuit, if anything, they would be infuriated and work actively to block him. The idea that he
would orchestrate a plan where he both threatened and expected collaboration from the very
institutions he was undermining is inherently contradictory. It would require an implausible
alignment of incentives, perfect foresight, and trust from actors who had every reason to oppose
him, conditions that simply cannot exist in the real world.
Perhaps most damning of all, if the fraud was all about profiting from public fear, well... in 1999–
2002, public concern was significant, vaccine uptake dropped, media attention was immense, and,
the perfect conditions arose for him to put this business grift into action. Yet, facing such perfect
opportunity to act, he never pursued a trial, never developed any drugs, and never even tried to do
anything that would advance that supposed motive. In other words, even under the “best possible
conditions” for a fraudulent scheme to succeed, he did nothing to even attempt to capitalize on it!?
And this is supposed to be the most elaborate fraud in medical history? Come ON!! It's patently
absurd! He left his perfect life for, this? You have got to be kidding me!
And, if you thought it couldn't be LESS coherent, well, it can.
Facing a declining vaccine uptake (due to media coverage of Wakefield's work), measles deaths,
and many parents that were asking for safer alternatives to the MMR vaccine who refused MMR
but still wanted to protect their children, the UK government/medical officials actively pushed a
policy against the use of monovalent/single dose vaccines, and specifically made those alternatives
even more difficult to access, even though they existed elsewhere and were technically available
(but hard to get and expensive).
And their main excuse? “We don’t want a drop in vaccine uptake. It takes longer for children to
complete the schedule if they require three separate visits, which they may also fail to attend.
Therefore, we cannot recommend single-dose vaccines for parents who won’t use MMR.”
In other words, they were saying: “Parents who refuse MMR but want an alternative? Fine… don’t
get vaccinated. We’re not offering any choice, because we can’t risk people not getting vaccinated.”
Against their own interests (to maintain vaccine rates), they set policy up that made it difficult for
parents who wanted single/alternative vaccines. Is that evidence of an effort to prevent a control
group? Perhaps it does. We'll never know.
Does it further strengthen the impossibility of Wakefield's elaborate fraud? Indeed it does. That's
because by actively restricting and making access to single-dose alternatives difficult, the
authorities effectively prevented Wakefield from easily profiting from hesitant parents by selling
single vaccines or MMR alternatives, because parents would face significant barriers and pushback
when trying to pursue alternatives, if they would even find out alternatives existed. Their own
policies created the conditions that made any “fraud-for-profit” scheme structurally unworkable
and therefore implausible, because Wakefield was actively aware of this (he received hard pushback
from officials after he promoted the single dose vaccine on TV). =-
When viewed in the totality of the case, the alternative explanation, is a far more coherent
explanation that aligns far closer with the actual evidence. It accounts for incentives, rational
behaviour, and the observed outcomes.
Brian Deer and his book sales, headlines, awards, and payments to do pharma conferences and his
professional reputation? The media, the government, and the medical industrial complex? They all
benefited materially or reputationally, controlling the narrative and consolidating power, protecting
their reputations and their institutions and their vaccine programs. The real “proof of incentives”
lies in who actually gained and who actually lost.
The vilification of Wakefield has arguably become the medical industry’s single most powerful tool
for shutting down debate and “poisoning the well.” Today, any questioning of vaccines at ALL or
broader medical issues AT all, is often met with an immediate, reflexive dismissal which sounds
something like: “Oh, that’s just because of that fraudulent study by Wakefield, it’s all debunked,
discredited quackery!” This reaction demonstrates how effectively the narrative has been leveraged
to protect reputations, institutions, and the dominant consensus, turning Wakefield’s personal ruin
into a broader instrument of control over dissent and skepticism.
If you try to test whether or not, what happened in reality, is coherent with a particular motive or a
framework, and it's basically able to explain everything that did in fact happen after you plug it into
the scenario, it's quite likely that it's fairly close to the truth. Though you can never read minds, and
know true intentions.