14 Monkeys 3: Mark Blaxill Swings and Misses for Wakefield Paper

The implosion of Andrew Wakefield’s career and the desperate efforts of groups like Age of Autism to reverse it has continued apace this week with the latest contribution by Mark Blaxill, “Joan Cranmer’s Fateful Decision and the Suppression of Autism Science”. Here, he takes another stab at presenting Andrew Wakefield’s latest obviously flawed, probably fraudulent, suspiciously published and now-retracted paper as the Great White Hope to prove that vaccines cause autism. As someone who took the initiative last November to contact the editor of Neurotoxicology to demand the retraction of this paper, and call for Neurotoxicology to be boycotted out of existence if it ever saw print, I feel obliged to take yet another shot at this twitching carcass of a non-story.

I was most struck by the fact that, for the third time, AoA has used my work without credit and in a misleading manner, in the form of the following passage: “We have obtained evidence, however, that Cranmer has participated in two separate communications on her decisions regarding the primate paper. The first of these came last November, in the form of a response to a threatening letter she had received, at which time Cranmer gave a strong defense of Neurotoxicology’s review procedures…”

Let’s go over the facts, compared to AoA’s spin. “We have obtained evidence”? My correspondence with Cranmer was made available to anyone who cared to look it up last November. “Threatening”? I told the editor, “unless you retract immediately, I feel it is the duty of all professionals to boycott your magazine and all others in the Elsevier line.” This could be considered a threat, but certainly not of the variety that one might think of from AoA’s tone, and appears to be assumed by a commenter: “I wonder what threats were made to Joan Cranmer by Elsevier? Is there any way to find out? I’d bet that it was much, much more than justthe threat of losing her job.” Note how AoA’s failure to cite properly and accurately allows this reader to transmute my protest and call for a boycott not only into something more sinister, but also into “threats… by Elsevier”. (So, ) Naturally, I posted a comment for the purpose of correction, and of course it has failed to appear. But, the joke is on them: In the Feb. 12 post on this story, my email to Cranmer was quoted in full. Anyone who read this article should recognize that the letter contains nothing that could be considered a threat of violence or harassment against Cranmer personally. Note to AoA: It does you little good to censor me for correcting you when you already quoted me saying the same thing!

An additional note to AoA: This is the second time they have characterized my work as “threatening”, in a tone that readily suggests violence or harassment. For future reference, this is my idea of that sort of threat: “Bow before me, mortal, and you shall only die!” Or: “If you don’t stop tapping that pencil, I’ll break it in half and shove the jagged ends up your nose!” (Okay, I may have actually said one of those.) See the difference?

I am sure that Blaxill’s intended purpose is to divert attention from the possible role of criticism and protest by professional scientists to a conspiracy theory of intimidation by “Big Pharma”. He proposes (mainly through a headlined rhetorical question) that the paper was withdrawn at the order of Elsevier management. “Reed Elsevier’s CEO, Sir Crispin Davis. Davis, who retired in 2009 as CEO of Reed Elsevier, has served since July 2003 on the board of directors of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) a major vaccine manufacturer (also recently appointed to the board of GSK is James Murdoch, publisher of News Corp., which owns The Times of London, the newspaper which launched the media attack on Wakefield). In 2008, vaccines accounted for 12.5% of GSK’s worldwide revenues. And although Reed Elsevier has no known vaccine liability risk, GSK has been directly exposed to two of the most prominent autism/vaccine controversies. GSK manufactured Pluserix, a version of the MMR vaccine introduced in the UK in 1989 and withdrawn in 1992 due to safety concerns. GSK also produced a thimerosal containing vaccine similar to the one examined in the primate paper (which was a Merck product) named Engerix B…”

In other words, he has no evidence that there was any communication between Cranmer and Elsevier management. He presents no example of a conflict of interest regarding vaccines by a current member of Elsevier’s board. He does not offer a single example of a vaccine currently on the market that would be threatened by Wakefield’s paper. He admits that all GSK vaccines combined only account for an eighth of the company’s sales. He does not even try to explain what the phenomenon Wakefield and associates claimed to have observed actually has in common with autism. In fact, isn’t “delayed acquisition of reflexes” pretty much the of “regressive autism”? (The irrelevant reference to the “Urabe” MMR vaccine goes even further afield from anything relevant to autism.) In short, the scenario of “Big Pharma” successfully petitioning Elsevier to intervene in Neurotoxicology’s editorial decisions on behalf of vaccines is admitted to be based on no evidence, and on any amount of consideration would be massive overkill. (In other words, I might do it.) But this does not prevent Blaxill from calling on Cranmer “to resign as editor of Neurotoxicology in protest over Elsevier’s interference.”

Actually, he does offer what I expect he thinks is evidence of interference by Elsevier: He reports that Lynn Redwood, on contacting Neurotoxicology, was referred to Elizabeth Perrill who ( shall I insert “allegedly”?) said in part, “(T)he paper should not have been accepted in Neurotoxicology and the paper is not suitable for the audience of Neurotoxicology.” Blaxill opines, “the need for an Elsevier executive to speak for Joan Cranmer on this subject raises important questions about her own editorial independence.” Actually, I think it is far more likely to reflect Mr. Wakefield’s reputation as a litigious bully. If Cranmer had denounced Wakefield herself, his predictable response would be either a lawsuit, like several against longtime critic Brian Deer, or libels against her, like his denunciation of former supporter Richard Horton. (Blaxill unintentionally emphasizes the point by parroting the most hyperbolic complaints against Horton!) Under the circumstances, the safest course of action would be to direct inquiries to someone who can afford better lawyers!

Meanwhile, Blaxill makes some unintentional admissions of his own. Most notably, he states, “The first results from the team’s research were reported at an autism conference in London in May 2008.”

This effectively confirms the suspicion of critics like Gorski/”Orac” that the study submitted to Neurotoxicology was simply a recapitulation of the earlier abstract. By the harshest interpretations, this “recycling” can be considered fraud. Given this admission, what I judge to be a far more serious charge is confirmed: The abstract mentions testing of 18 reflexes, where the “published” manuscript described only 13. This discrepancy points to an intentional omission of data by Wakefield (the same charge made by Chadwick about the Lancet study!) The admission that the abstract and paper were the same study also strengthens the further suspicion that the “control” animals were added after the others had been tested. That would substantiate the suggestion of critics that the authors (of whom Hewitson appears to have been most responsible) carried out the most critical phase of their experiment without “blinding”. It also suggests that they may have failed to make “baseline” observations of unvaccinated monkeys behaving normally at the start. What all this means is that the most serious criticisms of the paper have been confirmed by AoA, and that if what is being admitted now had been reported in an open and timely way, the paper would almost certainly have been rejected.

Then there is this: “Despite protests from study participants, on February 2nd, the same day Horton announced The Lancet’s decision, Neurotoxicology informed the primate study authors of their decision not to proceed with publication in the print edition and soon removed the epub from its web-site.“ So, AoA, why didn’t you report it then? Don’t bother defending Blaxill’s line that “in the middle of the media frenzy sparked by The Lancet’s actions, the decision at Neurotoxicology went largely unnoticed.” Wakefield’s misfortunes with the GMC and the Lancet did not keep you from making at least two new posts about the “monkey study” between then and when the paper was publicly withdrawn. There are only two explanations of any merit. One is that you knew perfectly well what was coming, and chose to hype the study while it lasted. The other is that Wakefield knew but withheld the information, allowing (if not encouraging) you to set yourselves and your readers up for disappointment and embarrassment. If the latter is true, then you have even more reason to be upset with Wakefield than most!

Finally, there is the issue of anti-vaxx access to the media. Wakefield and others had early success getting favorable attention from the media, but in the longer run, the media has preferred simply to farm themselves out to both sides, like Krupp, the original “Merchants of Death”, encouraging brushfire wars between customers. Elsevier has egregiously followed this pattern, owning the journals that originally published Wakefield’s research, like the Lancet, the ones that demolished said research, like the Lancet again, and the few journals still willing to give an “autism-vaccine link” a hearing, like Neurotoxicology and the infamous Medical Hypotheses. So, do anti-vaxxers complain that both they and their opponents have been abused by Elsevier’s thoughtless or cynical management? No, they accuse Elsevier of plotting against them all along, just because one of this media empire’s lesser vassals finally threw them out.

I will speak last of AoA’s handling of me. I have at this point been the target of abuse at one point or another by at least five of AoA’s leading members. What I find striking is that they have usually declined to criticize or even identify me by name. What I gather from this is that they won’t poke this Possum with a ten-foot stick! I will not be conceited and suppose that this is fear on their part. But I do believe that, to whatever extent they understand me, they know I am not a target they can handle by their usual methods. I promptly challenge false claims they make, and know where I can go to present my message when they censor my corrections. I have no background in medicine or business that they can spin “conflict of interest” out of. I make absolutely no attempt to hide my identity, so they can’t fantasize such a background for me either. And, I have made it very clear that I have absolutely no fear of lawsuits. It would appear that, rather than trying to attack me personally, they are trying treat me as a faceless, nameless cog in their imagined “Big Pharma” conspiracy machine. If they think that can possibly work, outside of their own “moderated” blog, they are badly mistaken. All things considered, it’s rather gratifying to be a nuisance.

A longer version of this article is available at evilpossum.weebly.com.