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 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Contact: Patti Carroll (651) 785-5716 / pc27292@gmail.com

Researcher Wakefield in LaCrosse Oct. 4 to detail UK reporter’s fraud

ST. PAUL, MINN. – Researcher and patient advocate Andrew Wakefield, MB, BS, FRCS, FRCPath, will hold a press conference with Midwest autism families at a public park in LaCrosse, Wisconsin on Thursday, October 4 from 1-1:45 p.m.

The information session will be at the Myrick Park Gun Shelter, 2020 Myrick Park Drive, just north of the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse off Highway 16/LaCrosse Street.

Wakefield, an academic gastroenterologist and author of more than 140 scientific articles, will correct false reports on the 1998 Lancet MMR vaccine case series he co-authored with 12 other researchers. Freelance writer Brian Deer will talk Oct. 4-5 at UW-LaCrosse; in 2003 Deer was asked by a newspaper editor to come up with “something big” on the MMR.

Examples of Deer’s inaccuracies and unethical behavior are posted on the Internet, including a nine-part “Elaborate Fraud” series at the Age of Autism. Editor and former UPI investigative reporter Dan Olmsted interviewed more Lancet parents than Deer, whose deceptions include:

·   Deer obtaining confidential medical records that patients’ doctors couldn't even access;

·   Deer lying to parents by interviewing them using a fabricated name;

·   Deer lying about what was said in an interview with a parent;

·   Deer falsely claiming that children from the Lancet case series “didn’t have bowel disease” – though doctors’ records prove they do.

In March Wakefield’s colleague Dr. John Walker-Smith was exonerated by the High Court, with testimony under oath stating tests undertaken in the Lancet paper were clinically indicated and not for litigation purposes. Mr Justice Mitting criticized the U.K. General Medical Council, stating its judgment had been "based on inadequate and superficial reasoning."

In the United Kingdom:

·   The pathologists who made the final disease diagnoses and produced the "unremarkable colonic histopathology results" support the Lancet case series findings;

·   University College London has terminated its fraud investigation of Dr. Wakefield, on advice from the UK Research Integrity Office.

Books by Wakefield (Callous Disregard) and U.K. parents (Silenced Witnesses I & II) detail children’s post-vaccine regressions and symptoms – painful lesions, cramping, nutritional insufficiency, chronic diarrhea and constipation – which often defy treatment. Research that could help these sick children is being discouraged by copy-and-paste journalism denying these gastrointestinal problems even exist, despite clinical documentation proving otherwise.

“Government agencies and corporations pour enormous resources into manipulating science to support their policies and practices,” said Dr. David Lewis, Director of the National Whistleblowers Center Research Misconduct Project in Washington, DC. “The scientific community should support scientists who report findings that industry or government find threatening, and encourage research to reduce suffering no matter where the intellectual inquiries take us.”

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