Wakefield, as you recall, is the British gastroenterologist who in 1998 published a case series in The Lancet linking MMR to autism. It has since
been retracted and shown to have been
fraudulent, and Wakefield has had
his UK medical license stripped from him.
The “CDC whistleblower” conspiracy theory is based on the story of CDC scientist William Thompson, who in 2013 apparently contacted biochemical engineer turned incompetent antivaccine epidemiologist Brian Thompson to vent about a study he co-authored in 2004 that examined whether there was a correlation between vaccination with MMR and subsequent risk of autism.
Not surprisingly, the study failed to find a correlation. However, there was one subgroup, African-American boys, in which the unadjusted data showed a 3.4-fold increased risk of autism. (I’m simplifying for space considerations in providing background, obviously; if you want the gory details, read
here and
here for a contemporaneous account of the origin of a new conspiracy theory, as well as my review of the book
Vaccine Whistleblower and Andrew Wakefield’s
fraudumentary VAXXED.) Thompson had had disagreements with how the data were presented and how he thought the CDC has “suppressed” the unadjusted data. Unfortunately for him, Thompson didn’t realize that Hooker was recording their conversations, and Andrew Wakefield found out about it. Thus, he became the “CDC whistleblower” who seemingly validated what I like to call the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement, specifically that the CDC “knows” that vaccines cause autism but covered it up. It didn’t matter one whit that the correlation was found only in a small subgroup (African-American boys), but it did matter because African-Americans already have reason to distrust the medical community based on history. The “CDC whistleblower” myth feeds into that sad history, which is why Wakefield loves to invoke the
Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
This is also not the first time Andrew Wakefield has targeted people of color with his pseudoscience. By any objective measure, for the most part the CDC whistleblower conspiracy theory and VAXXED have not had much resonance in the African-American community other than in the Nation of Islam and among a handful of parents like Sheila Ealey who really believe vaccines caused their children’s autism. The first time around, unfortunately, Wakefield was much more successful.
Now, nearly a decade after he first started targeting the community, they are continuing to suffer measles outbreaks.
Thanks for the measles yet again, Andy
So to sum up, Wakefields paper still retracted because its garbage. Hes still struck off because hes a fraud, and the CDC whistle-blower story is a crock of shite as well. You got nothin pixie