Revealed:
undisclosed payments to Andrew Wakefield at the
heart of vaccine alarm
This page is
research from an investigation by Brian Deer for The Sunday Times of London and
the UK's Channel 4 Television into a campaign
linking the MMR children's
vaccine with autism. | Go to part I:
The Lancet scandal | Go to part II:
The Wakefield factor
The engine of the
international MMR scare was an English lawsuit,
later acknowledged to be meritless, funded
with taxpayer's money by the UK's Legal
Services Commission (formerly the Legal
Aid Board). From 1996, substantial sums were paid
to Andrew Wakefield, his supporters and
associates [be amazed by a Who's Who at this site], hired by a
lawyer, Richard Barr, to support the attack on
the vaccine. The following table was released to
Brian Deer in December 2006, under the Freedom of
Information Act
Notes:
In the above letter to Brian Deer, the
Legal Services Commission refers to sums
being allowed by a court. This means the
costs assessment process, carried out in
this case by a specialist judge, after
all claims in the litigation were known.
This court reduced numerous payments from
even higher figures than those reported
above, but did not determine whether work
was carried out effectively, whether the
calibre of the individuals named above
was appropriate to the task, or whether
the enormous scale of this activity was
warranted. Now the figures are published,
all of these questions are up for debate.
In an email to Brian Deer, Andrew
Wakefield said: "The costs judge has
revised the sum payable, by nearly
£100,000 and I am happy to abide by this
ruling." This suggests that his
original bill, for generic work, may have
been more than half a million
pounds. He said he gave money to
charities, and that fees reflected nine
years involvement in the lawsuit. "I
worked extremely hard on this very
onerous litigation because I believed and
still believe in the just cause of the
matter under investigation," he
said. "This work involved nights,
weekends and much of my holidays such
that I saw little of my family during
this time".
The Legal Services Commission letter to
Brian Deer makes it clear that the sums
stated are for the generic case -
common work, it explains, carried out for
all claiments. This implies that
substantial further payments may have
been made for individual reports on
children alleged to have been injured by
MMR. |
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