In my pro-vax past, I have frequently referred to Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent study, the source of all anti-vax evil. The nefarious scientist who had started an entire movement with his lies - at least that's how it was explained to me by people who knew, so I often played that trump card (I was still young). Until I heard him say sensible things, so sensible that I could not reconcile them with the reputation of that study. Please note: this was December 2020, we did not yet see what the vaccines caused.
Summary
In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a study which described a new syndrome of intestinal problems and autism in children, which led to retraction and its removal from the physician register in 2010. His observation of a gut-brain connection turned out to be correct, that was not the problem. But the question was what triggered the complaints - or their worsening. Concerned parents suspected vaccinations and vaccine residues had indeed been found in the intestinal biopsies. Wakefield saw this as a possible lead for further research. He should not have made that suggestion because it led to his complete flaring. Now that we have experienced the disproportionate, not to say hysterical reactions to corona critics, together with the data manipulation, gaslighting, strange court rulings and omnipresent propaganda of acclaimed journalists, a new light is shining on that old affair.
A few days ago, a CDC nomination was withdrawn. The rejected candidate, Dave Weldon, MD, makes the connection in an official statement with his position regarding Wakefield's work at the time. The fact that this is still being attributed to him now goes so ridiculously far that it casts doubt on the fraud allegations of the time - everything seems permitted to protect the Holy Vaccines. This article (re)examines Wakefield's findings, the GMC response, Weldon's account, and the proportionality of his sentence, against the backdrop of continued distrust over vaccines and health institutions.
In december 2020 waarschuwde Andrew Wakefield in een video voor de risico’s van mRNA-vaccins, die toen wereldwijd werden uitgerold. Hij voorspelde dat deze binnen zes maanden van de markt zouden verdwijnen – een voorspelling die niet uitkwam. Opnieuw onderschatte hij hier de nietsontziende push van de farmalobby, net als in 1998, toen hij als gastro-enteroloog een studie in The Lancet publiceerde over twaalf kinderen met een nieuw syndroom: inflammatoire darmziekten gepaard met autisme. Dat is de studie die nu altijd wordt aangehaald als "claim dat vaccins autisme veroorzaken". Laten we nog eens kijken wat daar nou precies gebeurde.
He saw that syndrome well. That pointed to a connection between gut health and neurological symptoms, an observation that forms the basis of the modern gut-brain axis theory. 1Independent research later confirmed that 30-50% of autistic children have gastrointestinal problems ranging from dysbiosis to chronic inflammation (McElhanon, 2014; Kang, 2019). His study was a starting point, not an end point: did it start in the gut and affect the brain, or vice versa? Was there anything that triggered that interaction?
Parents reported that symptoms started or worsened after the MMR vaccination. This was consistent with the measles virus particles found in the biopsies taken by virologist O'Leary's PCR tests. Wakefield did not establish a direct causal relationship, but suggested that further research would be needed to determine whether the MMR vaccine could indeed be an external trigger.
What followed resembled the prosecution of doctors who wanted to assess the usefulness of a corona shot at an individual level: a witch hunt. It was not a scientific discussion but a series of events that culminated in the retraction of his paper, allegations of data fraud, unethical practices, conflicts of interest, his removal from the UK doctors' register, and a protracted, still-ongoing public crusade. He is lucky that transgressive behavior had not yet been invented, otherwise he would undoubtedly have been accused of it.
Brian Deer
Wat was nu werkelijk het wetenschappelijke argument? Journalist Brian Deer muntte de term "ernstig professioneel wangedrag". Hij schreef in opdracht van een van de kranten van de Murdochs, die in pharma-aandelen zitten. Deer en de GMC (General Medical Council) stelden dat Wakefield bij 9 van de 12 kinderen de tijdlijn van symptomen had gemanipuleerd, gebaseerd op een vergelijking met originele dossiers (in die tijd kennelijk nog niet zwartgelakt). Deer wees op postdateringen. Constipatie op zes maanden was genoteerd als na achttien maanden, achterstand op negen maanden naar vijftien – en de GMC oordeelde dit als ‘dishonest’. Toch blijft de vraag of dit pure fraude was of een interpretatie van klinische waarnemingen. Wakefield stelde later dat ouders een verergering rapporteerden, en dat hij dat vastlegde (Callous Disregard (2010)). If these children were already burdened – with bowel problems or early autism traits – and an event worsened their condition, this may indeed have been a clinical observation. Independent studies do not rule out the possibility that a subgroup like this is more sensitive to triggers. This plausible possibility has not even been specifically tested.
In May 2010, the GMC found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct, and he was struck off the register. The data manipulation was part, but not the heart of the matter. The suit focused mainly on protocol and financial issues: no ethics approval for invasive tests such as biopsies and lumbar punctures, a £435,643 payment from lawyers preparing anti-vaccine cases, and a patent on a competing single-dose measles vaccine that he failed to report - but that was a drug, not a vaccine2See the Highwire video with Del Bigtree, at the bottom of this article. Compared to the billions in turnover of the pharmaceutical industry and the revolving door and entanglement practices that have been exposed by corona, the amount mentioned seems small for such a study, which makes the emphasis all the more striking. After all, it is widely accepted that vaccine research is paid for directly by the party that has an interest in it. But not right now.
British Medical Journal, which publishes Deer's series(!) in which he accuses Wakefield of, among other things, an undisclosed conflict of interest, does not itself mention that they receive money from vaccine manufacturers Merck and Glaxo Smith Kline. This money laundering is so obvious.
The co-authors of the study were acquitted on appeal by the High Court. John Walker-Smith, chief of pediatric gastroenterology, was classified as clinical care and not research fraud. The whole ethical problem was thus off the table. Simon Murch was already acquitted by the GMC in 2010 because he worked under supervision and expressed doubts. Wakefield did not appeal, possibly because of the high costs or a weaker position, given his central role in the data manipulation and conflict of interest.
And to think that there are people who look up on Wikipedia whether something is correct or not.
Dave Weldon: Trump's CDC Director who wasn't allowed to come
Dave Weldon, American physician and former congressman, recently brought the issue back to the attention when his nomination as CDC director was withdrawn. In his official statement (March 13, 2025, see full EN and NL versions at the bottom of this article), he makes a connection between his rejection and his position on Wakefield's work and intentions.
Weldon, who researched vaccine safety around the 1990s-2000s, argued at the time that Wakefield's syndrome was legitimate and that O'Leary's PCR results – measles virus in gut biopsies – gave a real indication that MMR triggered a reaction in some children. He criticized the GMC delisting and Lancet retraction as a power play by Big Pharma, which forced O'Leary under pressure to retract his findings (read that piece!3I was surprised that O'Leary retracted his claims. I called O'Leary and asked him why he did this. There was a very long telltale pause. Then he said that it had taken him many years to get to where he was, in the scientific community, and after another pause, he said that he had four small children at home. I had small children at home and I understood what he was saying. If he didn't, he would be fired. He would be ruined. ). Weldon's nomination was panned by Senate resistance from Susan Collins and Bill Cassidy, who saw him as "anti-vax" despite the many vaccinations he administers weekly in his practice. He pointed to the pharmaceutical lobby, which spends millions on politicians and media, as the reason for his blockade – and saw parallels with Wakefield's fate. This reinforces the doubt: if the syndrome was real and Walker-Smith was acquitted, was the data fraud really that clear?
This interplay of forces extends beyond Wakefield's case. Bodies such as the Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB) or the Dutch College of General Practitioners (NHG) represent the status quo as it has arisen in symbiosis with the pharmaceutical industry, which represents billion-dollar interests – a scale that far exceeds Wakefield's £435,643. As far as the media is concerned, in the Netherlands we can follow on a daily basis how journalists know how to report selectively to support established narratives. Think raccoon dog. If our journalists and institutions distort numbers or simply pay their mortgages with them, why should the GMC or Brian Deer be beyond any doubt?
Science and journalism have themselves fueled this distrust through inconsistencies and dependencies that everyone has been able to see.
Reply
In 2011 (Natural News), Wakefield denied fraud, stating that Walker-Smith's 1996 independent report supported his findings, and pointing to the link between Big Pharma and Deer. In Callous Disregard (2010), he emphasized that parents of the children studied spontaneously mentioned MMR as a moment of aggravation, and that he took their concerns seriously. The specific timeline discrepancies are debatable4See also the Highwire video And he focuses in particular on his syndrome and the broader vaccine safety discussion. But all those arguments do not undermine the claim of the article because it was not even about vaccines, they played a supporting role. It was made scientifically plausible that vaccination was something to take a good look at with this syndrome.
Deer claims that in some children, symptoms start before vaccination. This leaves room for interpretation: were these children already burdened – with gut dysbiosis or early autism characteristics – and therefore more susceptible to MMR? Biologically, that is plausible. A leaky gut can enhance immune responses (Vuong & Hsiao, 2017), and MMR causes a response that can exacerbate dysregulation in a fragile subgroup. Large studies (Hviid, 2019; Madsen, 2002) do refute an MMR-autism link in the general population, but do not investigate subgroups with pre-MMR intestinal or neurological problems. It concerns a very specific, small subgroup and this is not reflected in population research, except perhaps in increasing autism rates. But they cannot be caused by the vaccine - we also know that line of thinking. Weldon wanted to test this, as CDC director – but the powers that be didn't think that was a good idea. That gives you food for thought.
Fraudsters and their fate
The proportionality of Wakefield's sentence remains an open question, especially compared to other fraud cases. Diederik Stapel produced data for 58 psychological studies. That is of a different order and certainly serious, although it is not about vaccines. He was fired, his papers were withdrawn but he was still published - OK, there are still jokes made about him but that's about it. Yoshitaka Fujii forged 172 medical papers(!); After his dismissal in 2012, retractions followed, with little further media attention. It probably wasn't about vaccines. Piero Anversa manipulated cardiac stem cell data including edited images; his lab was closed in 2018, 31 papers withdrawn, but he kept his license, strange, right? Sapan Desai provided fake data for Covid-19 studies in The Lancet and NEJM; after retractions in 2020, his career ended without any fanfare.
Data manipulation is serious and undermines trust in science, but the sanctions vary. Wakefield's delisting, combined with years of public humiliation, is disproportionate to these cases. Weldon's account and Walker-Smith's acquittal raise the question of whether fraud was the real problem, or should a dissident voice be stifled?
How do we protect ourselves against Big Pharma?
Four years after his mRNA warning, the case remains relevant. Excess mortality rates, variations in batch quality of vaccines, and inaccessible data are fueling the growing distrust in health institutions. Wakefield's syndrome – a link between intestinal inflammation and autism – was a real observation, later confirmed by independent research. His data manipulation may have been an ethical misstep, but the hypothesis that MMR vaccination worsened or even caused symptoms in a burdened subset has not been refuted or thoroughly investigated. Weldon's withdrawn nomination once again underlines that power determines who is heard, both in science and in politics.
It's not just something of today, it's been like this for decades. The Wakefiled crisis lifted a corner of the veil and Corona has brought it to the surface. That is now eating away at the willingness to vaccinate. Dave Weldon writes about the research he had wanted to conduct: "Misschien zou het publiek gerustgesteld worden, zeker omdat ze het van mij zouden horen, en zou het kunnen helpen om het huidige ietwat bezoedelde imago van CDC en de farmaceutische industrie te verbeteren." They missed that opportunity, why exactly... It gives the strong impression that things have not really changed much with vaccine authorizations in recent decades.
Original AND statement by Dave Weldon
English translation of the statement
Very worthwhile: special of The Highwire: Andrew Wakefield, the real story
For the details, listen to Wakefield himself in this interview with Del Bigtree, who has also been digging. An hour and a half of explanation and answers to the most pressing questions.
Footnotes
- 1Independent research later confirmed that 30-50% of autistic children have gastrointestinal problems ranging from dysbiosis to chronic inflammation (McElhanon, 2014; Kang, 2019).
- 2See the Highwire video with Del Bigtree, at the bottom of this article
- 3I was surprised that O'Leary retracted his claims. I called O'Leary and asked him why he did this. There was a very long telltale pause. Then he said that it had taken him many years to get to where he was, in the scientific community, and after another pause, he said that he had four small children at home. I had small children at home and I understood what he was saying. If he didn't, he would be fired. He would be ruined.
- 4See also the Highwire video
Thank you for paying attention to the Wakefield case. I saw a podcast of him with doc Malik in 2023 and then started looking further and also came to the conclusion that Wakefield had only committed 1 sin, which was to recommend further research that could potentially result in the kicking down of the sacred vaccination house.
I recently heard Jonah Walk say that in the medical world, any criticism of vaccines is forbidden (or words to that effect).
What many physicians do not sufficiently realize is that in two hundred years' time, current knowledge will be viewed very differently. It was not so long ago that leeches were used and the surgeon always had a bloodletting kit with him.
Now in physics, which I know a little bit about, it is already difficult to get a new explanation for a phenomenon accepted. But in medical science, you don't just have colleagues who don't like to admit that they have been performing pointless or perhaps even harmful interventions for twenty years. There is also an entire medical industry in which a lot of people work with huge financial interests and to make matters worse, there is a huge impact on the population if there were to be really big changes in medical insight. When Einstein showed that Newton's laws were correct but not complete, he was welcomed like a rock star, but if you show that certain vaccinations also have unpleasant side effects, then the treatment is different.
Which makes sense in itself. Perhaps it is not opportune to publicize that children die from youth vaccinations. In the US, there are about a hundred per year in the first year of life (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8255173/). In the Netherlands about five (my estimate). After all, you (maybe) save tens of thousands of (by definition other) children with it.
It is the well-known trolley dilemma and the solution is utilitarian. You sacrifice five scouts to keep an entire army from falling into a trap.
It is a pity that this phenomenon prevents a real evaluation of certain medical interventions such as mass vaccination campaigns.
Or they realize it but they think the people will not understand. Only experts can do that – generals, to stay in your analogy with the military.
The choice to sacrifice five children, can you leave it to the people? (On the other hand, it would not be the first time in history that child sacrifices have been made...)
But when you know you're saving tens of thousands of lives by sacrificing five, you don't want to give it up because a lot of people "don't agree." Then it's better to keep it to yourself.
You can't afford to lose your self-reflection and that's difficult when you have the power to play with lives and no one can check whether you are still making the right decisions. In addition, personal responsibility is taken away by institutionalization, which makes it even easier to persist in blunders made.
But it's much worse! Tens of thousands of children are not being saved. Hardly any children die from common childhood diseases.
I take the following passage from the RIVM report 213676008 page 21:
´Mortality decreased from over 2500 in the beginning of the century to a level of 1 to 14 just before vaccination was started in 1976 .´
(this is about measles)
How could that happen, you think? Well, maybe because of better living conditions, clean drinking water, etc., but NOT because of the injection!
That makes it extra bitter. Children are sacrificed, but no children are saved.
https://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/213676008.html
Autism and also congenital epilepsy (rather epilepsy without trauma to the brain because scars in the brain can also be the trigger for a seizure) I have seen develop in the intestines for over 40 years. During my training (care) for insane wore out because there would be no (nerve) connection between intestines and brain. No idea when that was scientifically proven, but what is the point of being right afterwards if people still do almost nothing with it to help people and especially children. ADHD can also be greatly improved with a diet, but society is not designed for an (individual) healthy lifestyle. I advocate critical injections, so my children only had a few and I made sure they had optimal gut health before and after the injection. Whether I did the right thing I will never know. My children do the same with their children now, but the discussions and nasty letters they now receive are many times more intense than I used to have to endure or actually the storage of data on paper was lost sooner than it is now... A grandchild of 12 years old had to get their own DigiD from the health insurance with the announcement that the child can now decide everything for himself. A binder full of letters from that can still be caught up... deeply sad. Many doctors also do not turn a blind eye to file falsification to put you in a bad light and to commit fraud. So we avoid every doctor but live a healthy lifestyle and occasionally someone has to go to the emergency room due to an accident. We are obliged to pay (way too much) for that. The broom through!
If we have to talk about vaccines and medicines, Dick Bijl is a good source.
https://www.hetpillenprobleem.nl/Medisch
But why do we use so many 'drugs'?
https://www.gezond-wereldnieuws.com/post/geschiedenis-farmaceutische-industrie-ontstaan-rockefeller-foundation
It's purely business and the bottom line right now is that the food industry makes people sick and the medical industry doesn't make people better.
Now that I'm being radical, here's the following link:
https://www.frontnieuws.com/dr-trebings-vaarwel-kiemtheorie-ontketent-debat-over-vaccins-ziekte-en-moderne-geneeskunde/
I wonder where exactly I can follow that debate because I don't see it anywhere. Nowadays, with a solemn face, any debate that is not in line with the narrative is called dangerous. Danger works on the emotion of fear and we have seen where that leads.
Dick Bijl is great. That his sound can cause so few ripples is telling.
The 'germ' and 'viruses don't exist' debate doesn't interest me. For me it is a 'black holes don't exist, they are actually purple' discussion. It is about infecting, multiplying, the 'viral' ability to infect. Because that is denied, I have dropped out.
I am not really interested in what you do with information, what I want to make clear is that there seems to be only one story.
Otherwise I have the strong impression that there is another story. That doesn't interest me that much. After all, we know the importance of the biome, nutrition, lifestyle, stress, and our immune system. Denying immunity and infecting each other seems flat earth-like to me. Look at measles for example, or serial passing, or https://virusvaria.nl/pokeren-met-besmettingen/ . A critical response to the poker experiment was 'it couldn't have been a virus because they don't exist. It might have been something else.' It could be that it wasn't a virus, that's fine. But infection is certainly possible. And not everyone is equally receptive. As long as that remains the case, I don't understand the whole battle over viruses. It is a workable model; unfortunately it has been hijacked by the pharmaceutical companies. It can hardly be called science anymore.
Germ and terrain theory are two extremes. The truth will lie somewhere in between.
Or both are true. And one theory does not exclude the other. There may also be more theories. Unfortunately, progressive insight with real science has been abolished (it took far too long for me anyway...) and replaced by so-called scientific consensus with the most money. And people have been divided into parts, with a white coat with a protocol for each part.
Ha ha, or neither. The so-called pathogen may be a carrier with which we exchange DNA information for rapid evolution.