Today’s i Paper and Independent carry a front page story that gives Andrew Wakefield everything he could wish for. Two days ago I blogged a piece on Wakefield’s recent attempt to capitalize on the measles outbreak in Wales. He issued a statement on Age of Autism, a blog that reflects the views of its sponsors, US organizations like Safe Minds and Generation Rescue. For them autism is a man made epidemic caused by vaccines and other environmental toxins. It can be cured by a combination of diets, vitamins, detox programmes and other “alternative” (i.e. unproven) therapies. Needless to say these ideas have no support within mainstream science. The recent booklet, The Good and Bad Science of Autism, provides a clear and accessible rebuttal in an excellent guide to the current state of our knowledge and understanding of autism

It speaks volumes that Wakefield is now dependent on media outlets like Age of Autism to get his message across. He is a marginal figure, reduced to touting proposals for a reality TV show, “The Autism Team” to US producers, as reported by Mark Hannaford in the Guardian. He still has nuisance value within the autism community. His acolytes continue to repeat the MMR hoax on blogs and other social media. But his days as a mainstream media figure are clearly over.  At least I thought they were until I picked up my copy of the i Paper today.

The article is neither a criticism of Wakefield for being the architect of the MMR scare behind the measles outbreak in South Wales nor a critique of the lies and distortions in his self-serving statement. It effectively gives him the right to reply.

1. His picture and his words form the headline. The expert rebuttal comes a poor second.
2. Although the print version of the i Paper concentrates on the single vaccine question, the Independent in print and online gives full coverage to his statement, which is printed in full. This statement repeats the lies that MMR is unsafe and causes autism. Incidentally, the Independent credits its source for Wakefield’s statement as healthimpactnews.com, a “news” site that was set up to promote the owners’ business, selling coconut based products as health foods. It also publishes their views on Darwin, prescription drugs, GM food and vaccines. They oppose them all while defending creationism or intelligent design and alternative medicines and therapies.
3. Getting an expert to respond to Wakefield’s statements inevitably puts the expert on the defensive and makes him sound less convincing than Wakefield, who is never questioned on any of the dubious statements published without comment. It also gives a false air of legitimacy. This was always the problem in the original coverage of the MMR Hoax. By appearing balanced it gave equal weight to very unequal ideas. Outside of the medical fringe there has never been any support for Wakefield amongst doctors or researchers.
4. There is an attempt to place Wakefield’s statement in context. But the message comes across that the question of single vaccines versus MMR is a legitimate topic for debate and that Wakefield, despite being struck off for malpractice in relation to research into MMR, has a legitimate voice in that debate.