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From The Roman to The Wakefield Inquisition



 
 
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Old January 27th 10, 01:32 PM posted to misc.health.alternative,misc.kids.health,sci.med
john[_5_]
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Default From The Roman to The Wakefield Inquisition

January 27, 2010
From The Roman to The Wakefield Inquisition
The UK General Medical Council Hearing decision is due Thursday, January
28, at 9:01am EDT. We'll be running posts throughout the week, including
this one, which first ran on 12/31/08.

From the Roman to the Wakefield Inquisition

By Mark Blaxill

As the year draws to a close, all of us at the Age of Autism are very
pleased to honor Dr. Andrew Wakefield. As we've reported here many times
during the past year, Dr. Wakefield has been the subject of a remarkable and
unprecedented campaign to discredit his work and character, most notably in
a show trial that is still underway in London, in hearings of the General
Medical Council. In the face of extraordinary attempts to silence him,
Wakefield has stood up to these attacks with grace and determination and has
continued his research and clinical work on behalf of children and families
suffering from autism. That makes him our first Age of Autism Galileo Award
recipient.

Like many of our awards this year, this wasn't a difficult decision. In
fact, this may be one of those unusual cases where the recipient of an award
in some ways outshines its namesake. To understand why that might be so, you
need to understand a bit more about why we chose to name the award after the
Italian scientist Galileo, what he represents to the history of science and
how his experience compares with Wakefield's.

Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy in 1564. And while he was a
physicist and mathematician of some note, Galileo was as much a practical
mechanic as he was a grand theorist; indeed it was his tinkering with convex
and concave lenses that gave him the tools to leave his lasting mark on the
world. As a skilled inventor of early working telescopes, he did not design
the world's first telescope, but he was the first to make them powerful
enough for scientific use. In fact, the word telescope (derived from the
Greek roots skopein, "to see", and tele for "far") was coined in 1611 to
describe one of Galileo's first instruments. For the accomplishments that
flowed from his pioneering work, he has been described by many as The Father
of Modern Physics; Albert Einstein even went so far as to name him The
Father of Modern Science.

But Galileo is celebrated today not as much for his engineering talent as
for the suffering he endured in support of an unpopular scientific theory.
Because it was Galileo's work with telescopes in the early 17th century that
lent critical support to the theory of heliocentrism, the idea that the
earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. As with his
telescope technology, Galileo was not the first to propose the heliocentric
theory: that distinction belongs to Nicolai Copernicus. Yet Copernicus, a
Polish mathematician, was well aware of the personal risk of disseminating
his ideas and delayed their publication for many years. Copernicus' major
work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was published only shortly before
his death at age 70 in 1543.

Galileo, by contrast, was an aggressive advocate for the truth as he saw it.
He used his telescope to provide clear visual evidence that the sun occupied
the center of the solar system. He then published his evidence fearlessly in
the prime of his life, starting while in his 40s. And although for a while
he obtained the approval of the Vatican to publish some of his work, he was
eventually forced to spend most his later life defending himself and his
findings. For as the significance of his observations for the prevailing
Catholic orthodoxy became increasingly clear, Galileo was derided as a
heretic, denounced publicly and finally given an ultimatum: renounce your
theory or else. In 1633, he was put on trial by the "Supreme Sacred
Congregation of the Universal Inquisition", known today as the Roman
Inquisition, and convicted of heresy. Barely escaping prison, Galileo spent
the rest of his life under house arrest, where he died nearly ten years
later.

The many parallels between the Roman Inquisition and the Wakefield
Inquisition are uncanny. Like Galileo, Wakefield came to autism both as a
practical man and a scientist; his initial involvement in autism was simply
in response to a group of parents who approached him as a specialist in
pediatric gastroenterology. They told him, "Our children are not defective,
they are sick" and Wakefield listened. Also like Galileo, Wakefield didn't
originate the idea that vaccines might play a role in autism, but has become
the most prominent developer of the idea. As Galileo's telescopes allowed
him to discover the moons of Jupiter, so did Wakefield's use of new ways of
seeing, in this case an endoscope to see into a child's intestines, allow
him to discover a distinctive gut pathology in autism. He named what he saw
autistic enterocolitis, and it was a finding that quite literally turned the
brain-centric view of autism upside down. But this was no ordinary finding,
for Wakefield's specific challenge to the orthodox view of autism science
made him a target for the medical establishment. He published his first
major work in the prestigious journal The Lancet, where the editor Richard
Horton had full awareness of its controversial potential. But when the
controversy turned too hot to handle, Horton lost his nerve and in a
perfidious betrayal that history should remember (see John Stone's wonderful
essay on Horton (HERE)), Horton turned on Wakefield.

Thanks to Horton's perfidy, and again like Galileo, Wakefield now finds
himself on trial for his license to practice medicine in front of the
General Medical Council (GMC). And although the GMC might defend the
validity of its allegations, it is plain to all who have followed the case
closely that the trumped up charges hold little merit. Still, the outcome of
the proceedings lies in considerable doubt, for Wakefield has not been
subjected to these months of review on the basis of any actual medical
misconduct (not surprisingly, no parent with whom he worked supports the GMC's
case). Quite clearly, and again like Galileo in the face of the Roman
Inquisition, the offense for which Wakefield is really on trial is heresy.
And whenever an Inquisition has begun to confront the conflicts between
religious orthodoxy and inconvenient evidence, one can never predict how the
High Inquisitors will render their judgment. The only thing we can predict
is that a process like the Wakefield Inquisition is always more concerned
with appearances than justice.

Wakefield's heresy comes at a particularly difficult time for the medical
profession that has placed him on trial. The twin pillars of its quest for
the causes of human disease, germs and genes, have failed for years to
explain the scourge of chronic disease: a scourge that has replaced
infectious disease as the main public health problem of the developed world.
In the face of a simmering disquiet over what has become an increasingly
embarrassing scientific failure, it has become ever more important to the
profession's high priests to distract attention from the crumbling bulwarks
of their belief system and take action to defend the tools and targets of
those pillars: the germ theory of disease that was medicine's greatest
contribution to human civilization and provided its two principle tools,
vaccines and antibiotics; and the genetic model of human disease that has
been medicine's great hope to succeed germ theory and the precious disease
targets such as autism that it hopes to explain. Seen in this context,
Wakefield's heresies have been unusually threatening because they operate on
both fronts: they compete with the genetic explanations of autism with a
causal model that threatens to tarnish the heroic triumphs of germ theory.

So like Galileo's compelling work in support of heliocentrism, Wakefield's
dual challenge to vaccine development and autism science has evoked a strong
response from the highest levels of authority. In Wakefield's case, his
prosecutors have determined not only that he must be shown to be wrong, he
must also be punished. That means his work on autism (as well as others
doing supportive work) must be stopped while he must also be stripped of his
credentials as a member of the medical profession. The modern punishment for
heresy may not include death, but it can be exile and excommunication.

Casting the treatment of Wakefield as a religious response is the only way
to make sense of the behavior of the medical establishment over the last
several years. If it were not so serious, its escalating absurdity would
begin to resemble farce. One example is the latest defense of the
ever-expanding childhood immunization program. Instead of embracing the
importance of improving vaccine safety, the program's defenders have now
declared that the temple of the sacred program must never be defiled, and
certainly must not be subjected to conventional safety research. So the
obvious research project of comparing the total health outcomes in
vaccinated vs. unvaccinated individuals has been rejected not merely as too
expensive, now it simply must not be done. In the Orwellian logic of the
CDC, such studies in humans would be "prospectively unethical" and
"retrospectively impossible."

Let's be frank here. This is an epistemological obscenity: It's not just
that we don't know some very basic things about the safety of the sacred
program, we also cannot know and should not seek to know. This stance should
offend even the most skeptical scientists. Still, the farce continues.

In the meantime, there remains a body of published evidence that must be
dealt with. And for this, since the retraction of every published study is
well-nigh impossible (some of Wakefield's less courageous co-authors
famously "retracted the interpretation" of the Lancet paper, but they couldn't
retract the evidence) there is only one answer left. Nullify the source of
the heresy itself. Practically speaking, when establishment voices can no
longer claim the absence of causal evidence, the fallback position must be
that there is "no credible evidence" linking vaccines and autism. Removing
credibility from the evidence requires that the high priests get personal:
they must mount a systematic attack on the personal reputations and
integrity of scientists who pursue and publish heretical lines of
investigation.

And this is why, decades after Stalin and Mao, we now have the travesty of a
21st century show trial in London, the Wakefield Inquisition. It's also why
the passionate call on a U.K. parents' web-site, Cry Shame, is so deeply
correct.

I wouldn't in any way diminish the importance of Galileo, but in an
interesting way, Wakefield's steadfastness in the face of adversity
outshines the man in whose name we honor him. For, although Galileo finally
agreed to recant his support for heliocentrism, Wakefield has never buckled
under the pressure. Instead he has stuck to his guns and continued to fight
for families with autism. Supported by private funding, his research work
has continued (stay tuned for some more blockbuster results next year). And
along with the terrific medical team at Thoughtful House, courageous doctors
like Arthur Krigsman, Bryan Jepson and Doreen Granpeesheh, he also continues
his clinical practice.

In the meantime, the heresy trial staggers onward towards its uncertain
conclusion; the GMC's verdict may well come shortly in the New Year. But our
judgment at the Age of Autism is clear. Andy Wakefield represents the very
best of the scientific tradition. He has persevered in the face of obstacles
that would have stopped lesser men in their tracks. He has published
continuously and fearlessly. He has pushed important research projects
forward despite countless attempts to declare the work irrelevant, the
issues "settled." He has dealt with opposing evidence with the professional
spirit of a scientist while also following the advice of Karl Popper that
"he who gives up his theory too easily in the face of apparent refutations
will never discover the possibilities inherent in his theory." Along the
way, he has unfailingly represented the issues in autism and the best
principles of the scientific method with dignity and restraint. Most
important of all, he has refused to be intimidated.

For all this and more, we would like to honor Dr. Andrew Wakefield with our
first Galileo Award. And like so many others in our community, I feel proud
to call him my friend. Let's be sure to stand behind him in the uncertain
times ahead.

Mark Blaxill is Editor at Large for Age of Autism.




 




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