Dr Andrew Wakefield answers critics in video interview, says BMJ has been hijacked by false journalism

Friday, February 04, 2011 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Andrew Wakefield, BMJ, health news

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(NaturalNews) In a video interview with NaturalNews, Dr Andrew Wakefield, the doctor accused by the British Medical Journal of falsifying the data in a study questioning the safety of MMR vaccines, asserts that the BMJ has been "hijacked" by a politically-motivated journalist making utterly false allegations.

Dr Wakefield has been grilled in the mainstream media in a series of interviews which largely consist of uninformed journalists like Anderson Cooper and George Stephanopoulos hurling rapid-fire accusations without giving Dr Wakefield an opportunity to answer any of them. The mainstream media interviews have taken on the resemblance of theatrical productions rather than serious journalism.

In an effort to give Dr Wakefield a fair opportunity to answer his critics, we invited him for an interview on NaturalNews. He graciously accepted, and we filmed a series of three conversations which will be aired here on NaturalNews via our popular video website www.NaturalNews.TV

The first of these three is available right now at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=608256A4461232...

"An investigation will be forced upon them."

In this video interview, Dr Wakefield says that BMJ is factually incorrect in accusing Wakefield of falsifying the study data in his 1998 paper published in The Lancet.

"[The data] were faithfully reproduced in the Lancet paper, and they were made in the most scrupulous, meticulous way. Those are the facts. Brian Deer knew those facts. When he made his allegations to the BMJ, he knew those facts. Did he disclose them to the BMJ? More importantly, did the BMJ, as a peer reviewed scientific journal, did they check the facts? Because the facts were fully available to them in the book Callous Disregard."

Dr Wakefield also explains how this desperate move by the BMJ to attack Dr Wakefield has eroded the credibility of the publication:

"They have been hijacked by a freelance journalist who is not expert in any of these fields. They have handed over their journal to this man and allowed him to publish knowingly false allegations, and they have gone along with it. In my opinion, they [the BMJ] have blown their scientific credibility. In their desperation... their fundamental belief that vaccines must be safe, [they say] please don't tell me this terrible disease has been caused by the physician, don't tell me that. Tell me anything but that, and we will take any information, even information from Brian Deer, that will convince us it's safe, and we will publish that, because that conforms with our belief system. That makes us feel more comfortable. That makes us feel that we, as a profession, are not culpable in this extraordinary disorder."

In this interview, Dr Wakefield also discusses the motivation for the BMJ to grasp at any effort to discredit those who question the safety of vaccines:

"They are so keen to prove me wrong, to prove the parents wrong, and to exonerate the medical profession, their political friends, their pharmaceutical friends, whoever it is, that they have gone ahead in this reckless way and done this. And now, based upon the clear, unambiguous, historical factual records, then I can come out and talk to you like this and say this without any fear of retribution from the BMJ because they've got themselves into this mess. The facts are the facts."

He goes on to say about the BMJ, "An investigation will be forced upon them."

Why the mainstream media won't conduct an honest, intelligent interview with Dr Wakefield

What struck me in this experience of interviewing Dr Wakefield is that this man has deeply-held compassion for the lives of children, and he combines that with rare courage and a commitment to real scientific thinking that dares to ask unpopular questions in the search for the truth.

A true scientist is one who pursues the evidence without regard to the political climate. Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams famously said, and Dr Wakefield has been accused of falsifying them simply because the facts he discovered were not to the liking of those who run today's medical monopoly.

I see in Dr Wakefield the kind of thinker who has historically played a key role in scientific revolutions, when one era of outmoded "scientific thinking" was replaced with a new era of deeper human understanding.

Dr Wakefield was also very polite, thoughtful and kind in our interactions. Experiencing this myself, I find it astonishing that people like Anderson Cooper never had the journalistic honesty to give Dr Wakefield an opportunity to tell his story in a fair interview. Then again, we all probably know why the mainstream media isn't interested in the actual scientific facts here: All the major media outlets are funded in large part by the pharmaceutical interests!

Dr Wakefield speaks on this issue, saying:

"Will the mainstream media now take this real story, the real facts, and actually do their job as journalists and report the facts? Will they report the truth? I doubt it. Why? Because they're owned. Their salaries are paid, albeit indirectly, in large part by pharmaceutical revenues. And the first thing that will happen when they try and do a story which deconstructs these arguments, the BMJ's arguments, and actually reconstructs them in light of the truth, [is that] there will be a call from their advertisers, saying [no]. So what will the mainstream media do? Will it live up to its job, its duty to the people to report the truth, or will it show complete disinterest? Anderson Cooper has been presented with the same nine questions. What was your story based upon? Show us the facts. Did you do your homework? Now are you going to pay similar attention to these documented historical facts? We shall see."

Watch the full interview yourself at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=608256A4461232...

Remember, this is only the first in a series of three interviews with Dr Andrew Wakefield. We intend to publish the other two interviews next week here on NaturalNews. There is much more to this story than is being dumbed down in the conventional press -- this story may ultimately turn out to reveal the BMJ engaging in the most colossal mistake in the history of peer-reviewed "science" publications. The editors of BMJ must be sitting in a room right now, reviewing the facts of the case, with their jaws dropping to the floor as they realize they've been had by Brian Deer. There were duped -- exploited by an individual with a political agenda -- to engage in the printing of outright falsehoods in the name of the British Medical Journal.

As you will see in these three interviews, the BMJ has given us a milestone in the history of the end of the dark chapter of chemical-based medicine: This "scientific" publication has revealed, for the whole world to see, that the Emperor of Vaccines wears no clothes, and that those who defend the Emperor will stoop to any level to defend their fictions, even at the cost of revealing their own lack of scientific credibility.

To debate with the conclusions of a physician is one thing; to outright destroy the career and reputation of a man engaged in what can only be called "unpopular" but important scientific investigation is the action of a dogmatic, unscientific institution which can tolerate no real questions at all.

That's not science. It's dogma. And in its desperation to vilify Wakefield, the BMJ has proven to the whole world, once and for all, that the vaccine industry is so afraid of the weakness of its position that it must resort to publishing false accusations in the name of science in order to try to fend off real scientific skepticism.

In seeking to destroy Dr Wakefield, in other words, the British Medical Journal, we will shortly observe, has only succeeded in destroying its own credibility. This story continues in the weeks and months ahead...

Watch this video interview now at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=608256A4461232...