14 DAY TRIAL // As said last week, BMJ reveals today the second part of the secret business that wanted to exploit vaccine fears, thanks to the fraudulent “MMR study” published by Andrew Wakefield in the 1998 Lancet paper.
According to case data, the “MMR doctor” planned to make millions out of this health scare in the United Kingdom as well as in the United States, and he could have made around £28 million a year.
This week, investigative journalist Brian Deer followed the money from the fraud behind the imaginary link between MMR vaccine and autism, in the second part of the “Secrets of the MMR scare” series.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, Deer managed to obtain documents that, added to his investigation, proved that Wakefield's institution, the Royal Free Medical School in London, supported him in his attempt to exploit the vaccine scare for financial gain.
It appears that even if the first child to be completely investigated was still in the hospital, Wakefield met with medical school managers to discuss a possible joint business.
And just days after the publication of the 'research' that caused a general panic in 1998, the doctor brought his business partners to the Royal Free to continue negotiations.
According to Deer's investigation, Wakefield was, at some point, given the chance to try to replicate his results (based on the study of only 12 children) with a larger validated study of up to 150 patients, but he refused, saying that this would jeopardize his academic freedom.
It could be that the doctor was far too busy doing something else, like with one of his businesses, named after his wife, that was planning to develop Wakefield’s own 'replacement' vaccines, diagnostic testing kits and other products (that would have only stood a chance if the MMR scheme worked).
The investigator found documents that proved the planned shareholdings of Wakefield and his collaborators, and how much money Wakefield expected to make for himself.
These financial forecasts that were never before available, show that Wakefield and his associates could have made up to £28 million, which is over $43,5million or over €33,6 million a year, and this from the diagnostic kits alone.
In a 35-page 'private and confidential' prospectus obtained by Deer, that was aimed at obtaining an initial £700,000 from investors, it was written that “it is estimated that the initial market for the diagnostic will be litigation driven testing of patients with AE [autistic enterocolitis] from both the UK and the USA.
“It is estimated that by year 3, income from this testing could be about £3,300,000 rising to about £28,000,000 as diagnostic testing in support of therapeutic regimes come on stream.”
Next week, we will have the information from the third and last part of the BMJ report.