Primary scientific research being carried out at the Microscopy Laboratory at the Idaho National Laboratory; facebook.com/idahonationallaboratory; Wikipedia Commons
Where Science Meets the Doctrine and Covenants: Come Follow Me Lesson: February 24 – March 2: Doctrine and Covenants 18
Today’s post is longer than usual and focuses only on science, but I hope you will read what I consider to be some very important messages.
In Doctrine and Covenants 18:2-3, 21, the Lord told Oliver Cowdery, “Behold, I have manifested unto you, by my Spirit in many instances, that the things which you have written are true; wherefore you know that they are true. And if you know that they are true, behold, I give unto you a commandment, that you rely upon the things which are written…Take upon you the name of Christ, and speak the truth in soberness.”
The Lord, in these verses, is obviously speaking about the truth of the Book of Mormon, of which I add my testimony — especially having spent all of last year testifying of the truth we see between science and the Book of Mormon. However, many of our Church leaders have gone beyond that statement of truth, and have addressed the truth coming from scientific research.
For example, President Brigham Young spoke of total truth many times: “Our religion measures, weighs, and circumscribes all the wisdom in the world—all that God has ever revealed to man. God has revealed all the truth that is now in the possession of the world, whether it be scientific or religious. The whole world are under obligation to him for what they know and enjoy; they are indebted to him for it all, and I acknowledge him in all things.”1
A scientific paper has four principal portions: introduction, methods, results, and discussion. The introduction tells the past history of the question the scientist [I use the singular here but papers are often the work of many scientists] is addressing in the paper, as well as a general statement about what he or she is trying to accomplish in the study being described. The methods section describes what the scientist did in detailed enough steps that other scientists can repeat the study. The results section tells what the scientist discovered by applying the methods previously described. This is the “truth” part of the paper. The idea of science is that anyone who applies that same methods described in the study will obtain the same results — therefore, science is verifiable. In the discussion, the scientist states his or her opinion of what the results mean and why they are important to our overall knowledge of the world around us. Most of the time, the opinion of the scientist is substantiated by the results provided.
However, I have had experiences in my career where another scientist has published a paper that had a direct impact in my field of research on the origin of embryonic limbs. In one case, a scientist made a statement in the discussion section of his paper that was not only not warranted by his results, but was in direct conflict with those results. Another scientist quoted his discussion statement as grounds for denying an NIH grant that I had submitted. I contacted the original scientist and pointed out that his discussion statement was not warranted by his results. He examined the areas in his paper to which I referred and concurred that the statement in his discussion was in error. However, unfortunately, grant reviewers are anonymous, so I could not point out the error to whoever turned down my grant.
In my opinion, over 99.99% of scientists are meticulously honest in reporting the results of their studies. We employ “controls”, and often employ what we call a “double blind” technique in an attempt to overcome any bias, even unconscious bias, in our methods. However, I am aware of two glaring exceptions to this general rule. These are two cases of scientific fraud. In one case, William McBride; who first reported the connection between thalidomide and devastating birth defects of the arms, legs, and other body systems in 1961; actually lied about the results of a study conducted in his laboratory.
The following story is taken from my upcoming book: Thalidomide: The Monstrous Wonder Drug. This story is fairly long, but it points out critical issues of scientific fraud. One issue here is how uncommon scientific fraud is and how much is done to uncover and deal with such fraud.
William McBride (incorrectly) believed that thalidomide caused birth defects by interfering with acetylcholine action in targeted nerves. Therefore, he reasoned, any anti-cholinergic drug, such as thalidomide, Bendectin, and scopolamine, may be a teratogen (causing birth defects; he was also wrong in this concept, in that thalidomide and Bendectin are not anti-cholinergic). He first tested scopolamine (which is anti-cholinergic) by injecting it into chicken eggs, which is not a good test system for teratogens. A test drug is typically injected into the yolk where it is sequestered and its access to the chick itself, or the vascular system, which are only on the yolk surface is very unpredictable. Phil Vardy and Jill French helped with the injections. Vardy considered “…the experiment ‘half-baked’…[and] saw absolutely no merit in writing a paper on the subject and was surprised when, three years later, he discovered by accident that one had been written and published in McBride’s name…It was among reprints of several other papers in the front secretary’s room.”2 For one thing, the “experiment” included no controls, in spite of the paper claiming that there were controls.
Next, McBride decided the test scopolamine in rabbits. Vardy injected scopolamine hydrochloride into six rabbits. “‘It was a disaster,’ he [said]. ‘Three animals weren’t pregnant and two animals died.’” In a second “experiment” McBride had six more rabbits dosed in their drinking water. The does were opened near term, and one of the six litters had deformed kittens. In June 1982, Vardy saw a parcel of reprints addressed to McBride, Vardy, and French. The reprints were of a paper, Effects of Scopolamine Hydrobromide on the Development of the Chick and Rabbit Embryo, which Vardy had no idea had even been submitted.3 I have an original reprint copy of the paper sent to me by McBride. Vardy checked out the files for the paper. It had been submitted to the journal Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology and had been rejected. The manuscript had been revised at least five times, with major changes.
Vardy had injected six rabbits and dosed six more orally. The paper showed that eight rabbits had been injected and eight had been dosed orally. Vardy claimed that of the six injected rabbits, only one survived that was pregnant. The data in Table 2 of the paper showed that of eight rabbits injected, two indeed died, but six delivered a total of 38 kittens; at least none were listed as malformed, but 7 resorptions were listed. The six rabbits treated orally had become eight, and rather than 39 kittens, of which 8 were abnormal and one resorbed, there were 48 total kittens, of which 12 were abnormal (in two litters; head defects but no limb defects) and 4 were resorbed. Dose levels were also changed to make them look more uniform. The paper said that there were eight control rabbits. There had been none. The paper claimed that the kittens had been sectioned. They had not. The original paper had presented the original, actual data and that’s why it was rejected.4
Vardy sought out the advice of several colleagues. He was advised to photograph the kittens in their jars, along with the dateline on that day’s newspaper as background, to show that they had not been sectioned. He also was advised to confront McBride and record the meeting. McBride was away when the reprints had arrived and Vardy confronted him upon his return, 28 June 1982. He showed McBride a reprint of the paper, as well as the rejected manuscript, and said, “‘…you published this without Jill and I knowing anything about it. Secondly, it contains several fabrications…there are two animals in here which don’t exist.’”5
McBride countered, “‘That paper is what my notes say.’”
Vardy pressed, “‘…after the rejection of the paper at the end of 1980 and the receipt of this paper in mid-1981 you got two more animals.’”
After a heated discussion about the inserted data, McBride stated, “‘Look, it’s a good paper…This work is important. I’m convinced that if you repeated the experiment you would find the same…You don’t know how important this paper is.”6
Vardy said, “‘You publish falsehood without my knowledge and expect me not to get sore…Why? Why for such a piddly little paper? You a medico at the peak of his career, honoured by Australia, on the way to knighthood, head of Foundation 41.’”7 Foundation 41 was an Australian organization, founded by McBride, for the study of birth defects and other prenatal issues.
Apparently, the answer was fairly simple. McBride had submitted an application for funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. McBride said, “‘…one of the things [that inhibited their funding] was that our track record was poor because we only had five publications in the past five years…They are critical because we had done [a study of lead levels in children] for three years without publishing anything.’”8
McBride had played loose with the numbers of malformed children in the Bendectin case (a drug that extensive research has shown does not cause birth defects), changing the number of affected children in different interviews. He had played loose with his oral discussions about the number of animals treated with Bendectin. He apparently couldn’t grasp the critical importance of absolute integrity in science. McBride claimed that Bendectin, like thalidomide, caused birth defects of the limbs by damaging the nerve supply to the limbs. I and one of my students, had published papers showing that eliminating the nerve supply from a developing limb did not damage the limb skeleton, contrary to McBride’s claim. I had been called upon during some of the Bendectin trials to testify against McBride’s claim.
“‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.”9
“‘I’m not going to sue,’ Vardy answered, ‘but I will if I have to. This is the straw which broke the camel’s back.’”10
Vardy waited two weeks for McBride to produce the missing data for the four extra rabbits. McBride hadn’t, so Vardy met with Joan Jones, Foundation 41’s Executive Secretary, “who was fiercely loyal to McBride. She heard Vardy out and replied, “‘What are you trying to do with this…bring down Foundation 41?’”11
“‘I’m not bringing down Foundation 41,’ Vardy replied. ‘Bill McBride is bringing down Foundation 41.’”12
A staff meeting was called for 16 July 1982. McBride opened by apologizing for submitting a paper with Vardy and French’s names on it without informing them. (Such behavior is strictly against scientific protocol.) Then he went on to other matters, such as the foundation’s morale. French resigned 1 October. The same day, Barbara Black, Foundation 41’s psychologist, and four other foundation members drafted a letter to the Research Advisory Committee (RAC). With the approval of other foundation staff members, they sent the letter to the Committee. The letter outlined the problems with the Australian Journal of Biological Sciences and asked the Committee to “‘…investigate this matter fully…’”13
After a month’s worth of discussion and meetings, two members of the RAC advised McBride to send a retraction to the Journal. Vardy resigned from the foundation in early November. McBride held a meeting with the staff, said he was disappointed that a letter had been sent to the RAC, and fired everyone who had signed the RAC letter.14
They appealed to their union, the Public Service Association, which called for a hearing on 5 November. Joan Jones attended in behalf of the foundation and asked for more time. The extra time was granted, but “‘…the judge restrained the foundation from proceeding with the dismissals.’” However, on 26 November, John Darling, Foundation 41 Chairman called a staff meeting where he called the women who had signed the RAC letter “prima donnas.” However, he reversed the dismissals. None-the-less, the work situation at the foundation was intolerable and researchers began to resign. “The various research units and their research programs were left in virtual ruin…The Developmental Biology Unit was temporarily defunct.”15
On 22 July 1983, with no one else having done anything, Vardy and Fisher wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal, stating that the paper had been submitted without their knowledge or approval. “‘Moreover, some of the results contained in the [paper] were inconsistent with those recorded in our laboratory notes. After attempting to seek an explanation from Dr. McBride, we resigned from Foundation 41…we wish to dissociate ourselves from this publication.’”16
Nothing much happened in this story for the next 3 ½ years. Maybe McBride had dodged a bullet; maybe, once again, he had gotten away with fudging the data to make his point. Then on 12 December 1987, Australia’s Science Show was broadcast over the Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. The theme was scientific fraud and the subject was William McBride, his accuser was Norman Swan, pediatrician and ABC radio journalist. The broadcast went on the air despite the fact that the day before, Allen, Allen, and Hemsly, attorneys for Foundation 41, who had advance warning of the program, threatened David Hill, managing editor of ABC, with a lawsuit if the program was aired. “Step by step, Swan built a damning picture of how McBride heavy-handedly fudged the results of the inconclusive rabbit experiment with scopolamine in such a way as to make it look as if Bendectin/Debendox causes birth defects.”17
The radio program featured in-depth interviews with former Foundation 41 employees: Phil Vardy, Jill French, and Anne Manuel; Tom Watson, a member of Foundation 41’s Research Advisory Board; Michael Bennett, a former member of the Research Advisory Council; and Bill Nicol, author of the forthcoming book, McBride: Behind the Myth. Nicholas Wade, New York Times editorial writer and co-author of the book, Betrayers of the Truth — Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science,18 was also interviewed and disclosed that scientific fraud was “almost always” brought to light by a junior staff member. McBride refused an interview, but clips from his former radio interviews were featured.19
Swan had primed the news media for his Science Show episode by posting a story in The Age and a front-page story in the Sydney Morning Herald. Ray Hyslop, chairman of the New South Wales Committee of the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, that “‘If the evidence used to criticize Debendox is found to be false, this would make us even more disappointed that such a valuable drug should be withdrawn from the market.’”20
The Private Doctors Association immediately called for the return of Debendox to pharmacy shelves. Jodhi Menon, one of the members, said, “‘It’s an extremely useful drug and many women have been suffering [from morning sickness] needlessly since its withdrawal.’” He said that at the time Debendox was withdrawn from the market, the Association had “…publically drawn attention to the fact that the results of McBride’s research did not fit with the experience of the GPs who had been prescribing the drug.”21
John Baker, the Australian general manager for Merrell Dow stated that Bendectin/Debendox had been taken by over 33 million pregnant women around the world. Furthermore, over 35 scientific studies had failed to demonstrate any causal relationship between the drug and birth defects. In addition, the US Food and Drug Administration computer database, which listed pregnancy risk for around 430 drugs, showed Bendectin as the only drug rated as “zero risk.” In other words, it was the most carefully examined, safest drug of any taken during pregnancy — and it was highly effective at treating the nausea and vomiting associated with morning sickness.22
On Monday, 14 December 1987, two days after the radio program on Saturday, John Darling convened a meeting at Foundation 41 headquarters. Attending were Darling, foundation chairman, Ron Raines (accountant), Bruce McWilliam (senior partner in Allen, Allen and Hemsley), and William McBride. The meeting ground on for seven hours. After the meeting, McBride slipped out the back door, leaving the others to face the throng of reporters gathered outside the building. The press was handed an eight-page rebuttal of the charges, which was published, in full, in the Sydney Morning Herald the next day. The document blasted the press for its unfair coverage. Asked if McBride would resign, McWilliam said, “‘Certainly not.’” The document stated that “‘the Committee of management of the Foundation had expressed its complete confidence in and support for Dr McBride…The results achieved by the Foundation to date should allow us to rise above petty scientific jealousies. This is poor recompense for the hundreds of volunteers who raise over a million dollars per year to keep the good work of the Foundation going.’” McBride denied “‘…that he had been a party to scientific fraud…’”23 The Foundation had received a lot of money, but, as stated above, very few papers had resulted from the Foundation’s “research”.
Incredibly, the lie in the rebuttal went even farther. It claimed that a year after the original scopolamine study, Jan Langman, at the University of Verginia, who was conveniently dead, had conducted the experiments on the two (actually four) additional animals — obligingly, two in the injection group and two in the oral-treated group. According to McBride’s claim, Langman would have conducted those convenient extra experiments in August or September 1981. However, McBride, who was used to shooting from the hip to cover up lies, hadn’t done his homework well enough — at that time, “‘…Langman was so ill with lymphoma that his then graduate student…Lynn Davis…had to go to his bedside for instruction on her thesis.’” After Langman’s death, 2 October 1982, Davis collected all his research notes and papers. There was no reference to any rabbit experiments. Langman worked with rodents, not rabbits.24
Marshall Edwards, director of the University of Sydney’s Birth Defects Foundation and fellow-member of the Teratology Society with McBride, called for a formal, independent inquiry. “When there was still no announcement of an inquiry in February 1988, Edwards resigned from the Research Advisory Committee…[and] in April…publicly renewed his efforts to set up an independent inquiry into the allegations.’” The whole concept of formally dealing with scientific fraud apparently was so foreign to the Australian Academy of Science that it stalled, not knowing how to proceed. “In the meantime, the editors of Australia’s 12 main scientific journals — published jointly by CSIRO and the Australian academy of Science — met in Canberra to discuss ways of detecting and weeding out scientific fraud.”25
During those deliberations, Basil Walby, editor-in-chief of the Australian Journal of Biological Sciences, said that when Vardy and French wrote to him, he did not confront McBride about why he had submitted a paper without the co-authors’ knowledge or consent. “He said it was the journal’s policy ‘not to involve itself’ in such disputes.” Graeme O’Neill of the Age, criticized Walby “…saying it implied an unwillingness to confront the possibility that a scientific fraud had occurred…’”26
In the mean-time, McBride went on television claiming he was a victim of Character assassination “…aimed at destroying his credibility in a series of American court cases against the manufacturers of Bendectin/Debendox.” His testimony in those court cases was also based on his fraudulent work. He defended the foundation and his, shoddy, work. “…the foundation’s ‘dedicated’ work had brought about worldwide recognition it had also made ‘powerful enemies’: ‘The sinister overtones of this whole shabby episode have yet to be fully explored by the media. We hope they will be, and that those with vested interests will be exposed.’” “Remarking that the allegations involved a dispute ‘over a few rabbits,’ McBride asked rhetorically: ‘What is more important — a child’s life or how much a rabbit drank in an experiment?’”27 He seems to have completely ignored the lives of the children aborted because of the panic he had instigated with his false claims about Bendectin. Pregnant women had chosen abortion, worried that the drug had caused birth defects in their unborn babies — it hadn’t, and they had aborted perfectly normal fetuses.
McBride, completely unrepentant, continued his rhetoric: he “…accused pharmaceutical companies of conspiring to destroy his credibility: ‘I gave evidence in the United States and they just wanted to destroy me as a witness. Not only me, but anyone who gave evidence against them. Because of thalidomide, I’ve been regarded as someone who is on the ball, watching out for drugs, and certainly I was a prime target…for sure.’”28 The only “conspiracy” had been on McBride’s part.
Finally, on 31 May 1988, Foundation 41 announced the members to convene a special inquiry: Harry Gibbs (chairman), former chief justice of the High Court; Robert Porter, director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University; and Robert Short, professor of physiology and anatomy at Monash University. The committee began hearings on 25 July. The inquiry and deliberations were kept under wraps, with almost no media attention. Then, on 2 November 1988, the committee released shattering news: “The Foundation 41 Committee of Inquiry had found William Griffith McBride had committed scientific fraud…The 25 pages of the committee’s report were scathing, and forced McBride to resign immediately from Foundation 41…” The committee reported that “‘deliberate falsification did occur in the paper…that the experiment was not conducted with proper scientific method and was not honestly reported…and that in relation to the publication of those results, Dr. McBride was lacking in scientific integrity.’”29
McBride was still defiant. He stated, “‘I think what must be understood is that this is an argument over 6 or 8 rabbits…My entire career…will not be judged by the issues raised about this experiment but whether I have made a significant contribution to the welfare of past and future generations. Whilst I am disappointed in the findings of the Committee I have great faith that history and science will judge me kindly.’” He insisted, “‘Nothing I’ve done breaches the code of ethics of medical practice.’”30 That statement makes it quite clear that McBride had no concept of the practice of science.
McBride’s level of delusion at this point is made clear as he insisted, “‘I think this Foundation needs a pat on the back for the work they’ve done…the number of children which we estimate have been affected by [Bendectin/Debendox] throughout the world [which was actually none; except those aborted because of McBride’s false claims] would be more than the thalidomide children because it’s been on the market for years.’” He also insisted, “‘I haven’t broken the law. I’m not guilty of anything and I deny committing scientific fraud.’”31
Bill Nicol’s book, McBride: Behind the Myth, upon which I have relied heavily for this essay, ended at this point because it was published in 1989, before the rest of the story had played out. On 30 July 1993, an Australian Medical Tribunal found that McBride had caused “grave public mischief” and had his name stricken from the New South Wales state medical register having been found guilty of scientific fraud.32 He was also excluded as a member of the Teratology Society. He was reinstated to the medical register in 1998, though with several conditions, including that he not conduct research; but he was never reinstated into the Teratology Society. McBride died, aged 91, on 27 June 2018.33 Contrary to his stated hopes, neither history nor science have judged him kindly.
The second story is also a bit long, but it is even more important in describing the damage done by scientific fraud. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now secretary of Health and Human Services. As Amanda Seitz reported February 18, 2025 in the Los Angeles Times, “To earn the vote he needed to become the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a special promise to a U.S. senator: He would not change the nation’s current vaccination schedule…But on Tuesday, speaking for the first time to thousands of U.S. Health and Human Services agency employees, he vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases…Kennedy’s remarks, which circulated on social media, were delivered during a welcome ceremony for the new health secretary at the agency’s headquarters in Washington as a measles outbreak among mostly unvaccinated people raged in west Texas. The event was held after a weekend of mass firings of thousands of Health and Human Services employees. More dismissals are expected…Kennedy gained a loyal following for his nonprofit by raising objections to COVID-19 protocols and doubts around the COVID-19 vaccine. Despite his work, Kennedy repeatedly told senators that he was not ‘anti-vaccine’ during his confirmation hearings.”34
Seitz continued, “Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious-disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who sits on a federal vaccine panel, didn’t believe him… ‘I think he will do everything he can to make vaccines less available and less affordable because he’s an anti-vaccine activist,’…”35
On January 31, Lauran Neergaard and Mike Stobbe had reported on the AP News that, “The man who hopes to be President Donald Trump’s health secretary repeatedly asked to see ‘data’ or ‘science’ showing vaccines are safe – but when an influential Republican senator showed him evidence, he dismissed it…But Kennedy repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism and that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives, and he falsely asserted the government has no good vaccine safety monitoring. While appearing to ignore mainstream science, he cited flawed or tangential research to make his points, such as suggesting Black people may need different vaccines than whites.”36
So, where did Kennedy, and others, get the idea that childhood vaccines cause autism in the first place? Scientific fraud. The statement that “vaccines cause autism” is one of the most infamous conspiracy theories of all time. In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and colleagues published a fraudulent paper in the prestigious British journal, The Lancet. In the article, Wakefield et al. falsely claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.5 They stated, in the paper now stamped in big red letters on every section “RETRACTED,” “Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated, by the parents, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children, with measles infection in one child, and otitis media in another. All 12 children had intestinal abnormalities, ranging from lymphoid nodular hyperplasia to aphthoid ulceration… In these eight children the average interval from exposure to first behavioural symptoms was 6.3 days (range 1–14).”37
In 2004, six years after the Lancet paper was published, Sunday Times investigative reporter Brian Deer broke the story that Wakefield had been approached by a lawyer, Richard Barr, two years before the Lancet publication, who was looking for an expert witness to support a planned class action regarding alleged “vaccine damage”. Allegedly, Barr hired Wakefield to find cases to support the class action suit, and only then did they recruit the twelve children, actively seeking parents of children that might make a connection between MMR and autism. Deer said that Barr paid Wakefield “…£150 ($230) an hour…he had been confidentially put on the payroll two years before the paper was published, eventually grossing him £435 643, plus expenses.”38
For such a scientific study to have been done properly, cases should have been obtained from a specific set of medical records from a specific location over a specified period of time. Conversely, apparently unknown to most, if not all of the co-authors on the paper, Wakefield had actively recruited the participants in the “study”, from as far away as California. Eight of the twelve parents of the children included in the study had blamed MMR before even being recruited for the study itself and, apparently, that’s why they had been recruited. In a follow-up report published in the British Medical Journal in 2011, Deer stated, “As I later discovered, each family in the project was involved in…discussions before they saw the hospital’s clinicians. Wakefield phoned them at home, and must have at least suggestively questioned them, potentially impacting on later history taking.”39
Deer stated, “Nine children, it [the original manuscript; the number was reduced to eight in the final Lancet paper] said, had diagnoses of ‘regressive’ autism, and all but one were reported with ‘non-specific colitis.’ The ‘new syndrome’ brought these together, linking brain and bowel diseases.” Deer said that, “…Wakefield had already identified such a syndrome before the project which would reputedly discover it. ‘Children with enteritis/disintegrative disorder [an expression he used for bowel inflammation and regressive autism] form part of a new syndrome,’ he and Barr explained in a confidential grant application to the UK government’s Legal Aid Board before any of the children were investigated.”40
Deer continued, “First to crack was ‘regressive autism’, the bedrock of his allegations. [Deer quoted Wakefield], ‘Bear in mind that we are dealing with regressive autism in these children, not of classical autism where the child is not right from the beginning,’ he later explained, for example, to a United States congressional committee. …But only one…child…clearly had regressive autism. Three of nine so described clearly did not. None of these three even had autism diagnoses, either at admission or on discharge from the Royal Free.”41 Therefore, of the eight children reported in the Lancet study with “regressive autism”, only one actually exhibited the “syndrome”, and three didn’t have autism at all.
Deer said, “The two men [Barr and Wakefield] also aimed to show a sudden-onset ‘temporal association’—strong evidence in product liability. ‘Dr Wakefield feels that if we can show a clear time link between the vaccination and onset of symptoms,’ Barr told the legal board, ‘we should be able to dispose of the suggestion that it’s simply a chance encounter.’”42
The Lancet paper gave an average time of symptom onset at 6.3 days — a complete fabrication. In at least four of the eight cases, onset of autism occurred 4 years, 2 years, 5 months, and 1 month before the MMR vaccination. In two other cases, onset occurred 4 months and 6 months after the vaccination. None apparently had an onset of symptoms within a week of the vaccination. Furthermore, two of the autism cases also had siblings with autism, without MMR vaccinations, and another child was diagnosed with a “very small deletion within the fragile X gene” — clearly a genetic disorder associated with the autism.43
Deer’s investigation of the Lancet paper exposed a clear-cut case of fraud behind Wakefield’s publication — triggering the longest-ever UK General Medical Council fitness to practice hearing, and causing the Lancet to retract the paper — an unprecedented action on the part of a scientific journal. After the revelation of Wakefield’s misconduct, his co-authors had already withdrawn their support of the paper. The GMC found that Wakefield had been dishonest in his research, had acted against his patients’ best interests, had mistreated developmentally delayed children, and had ‘failed in his duties as a responsible consultant.’ As a result, in 2010, Wakefield was removed from the UK medical register and was barred from practicing medicine in the UK.44
According to a US CDC statement, “In spite of his despicable conduct for which he was barred from future medical practice, Wakefield, who moved to the US, continues his completely fake claims against vaccinations. Numerous subsequent studies, costing taxpayers millions of dollars, which would not have been necessary but for Wakefield’s fraudulent claims, have found no connection between vaccines and autism.”45 Let me repeat that: Numerous subsequent studies have found no connection between vaccines and autism. There is no government or pharmaceutical company conspiracy to cover up and withhold vital information from the American public concerning vaccination and autism — the conspiracy was on the part of Andrew Wakefield apparently for the sole purpose of making lots of money — and he is apparently still making lost of money here in the United States by feeding his lies to gullible audiences — who apparently want to hear that they are victims of government/big pharma conspiracies.
In spite of Wakefield’s clear fraud, the anti-vaccination mania spread to the COVID-19 vaccines. How many of the 7 million COVID deaths should be laid at the feet of Wakefield? Apparently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now secretary of Health and Human Services, is, or at least has been on that bandwagon. Kennedy has no medical background. He graduated from Harvard University in 1976 with a BA in American history and literature. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1982 and a Master of Laws from Pace University in 1987.
President Dallin H. Oaks has stated, “We live in a time of greatly expanded and disseminated information. But not all of this information is true. We need to be cautious as we seek truth and choose sources for that search. We should not consider secular prominence or authority as qualified sources of truth. We should be cautious about relying on information or advice offered by entertainment stars, prominent athletes, or anonymous internet sources. Expertise in one field should not be taken as expertise on truth in other subjects.”46
Speak the Truth in Soberness.
References
1. Young, Brigham, Discourses of Brigham Young: Second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, John A. Widtsoe (Editor), 1954, p. 2
2. McBride, W.G., The Effects of Anticholinergic Drugs on the Development of the Chick Embryo, IRCS Medical Science, 8:537, 1980
3. McBride, W.G., P.H. Vardy, and J. French, Effects of Scopolamine Hydrobromide on the Development of the Chick and Rabbit Embryo, Aust. J. Biol. Sci., 35:173-178, 1982
4. Ibid; Nicol, Bill, McBride: Behind the Myth, ABC Enterprises, Crown Nest, NSW, Australia, 1989
5. Nicol, 1989
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. Ibid
9. Ibid
10. Ibid
11. Ibid
12. Ibid
13. Ibid
14. Ibid
15. Ibid
16. Ibid
17. Ibid
18. Wade, Nicholas, and William Broad, Betrayers of the Truth — Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (Ebury Press, 1983
19. Nicol, 1989
20. Ibid
21. Ibid
22. Ibid
23. Ibid
24. Ibid
25. Ibid
26. Ibid
27. Ibid
28. Ibid
29. Ibid
30. Ibid
31. Ibid
32. UPI Archives, World renowned Australian doctor William McBride struck off, upi.com/Archives/1993/07/30/World-renowned-Australian-doctor-William-McBride-struck-off/6909744004800; retrieved 18 October 2024
33. Genzlinger, Neil, William McBride, Who Warned About Thalidomide, Dies at 91, New York Times, nytimes.com/2018/07/15/obituaries/william-mcbride-who-warned-about-thalidomide-dies-at-91.html; retrieved 18 October 2024
34. Seitz, Amanda, Feb. 18, 2025, Los Angeles Times
35. Ibid
36. Neergaard, Lauran, and Mike Stobbe, January 31, 2025, AP News
37. Wakefield, Andrew, et al., RETRACTED: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children, The Lancet, 351:637-641, 1998
38. Deer, Brian, Revealed: MMR research scandal, The Sunday Times. London, 22 February 2004; thetimes.com/article/revealed-mmr-research-scandal-7ncfntn8mjq
39. Deer, Brian, How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed, British Medical Journal, 342:c5347, 2011, bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full
40. Ibid
41. Ibid
42. Ibid
43. Ibid
44. Ibid
46. Oaks, Dallin H., Truth and the Plan, General Conference, October 2018
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
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