{"id":9339,"date":"2012-01-12T10:04:37","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T15:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/junksciencecom.wordpress.com\/?p=9339"},"modified":"2015-11-01T15:54:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T20:54:33","slug":"vaccine-controversy-hits-the-courts-wakefield-sues-bmj-for-defamation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/2012\/01\/vaccine-controversy-hits-the-courts-wakefield-sues-bmj-for-defamation\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaccine Controversy Hits the Courts: Wakefield Sues BMJ for Defamation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The man who in 1998 launched the vaccine-autism scare wants his day in court.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Medscape <a href=\"http:\/\/www.medscape.com\/viewarticle\/756645\">reports<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> The lead author of a controversial 1998 study linking a childhood vaccine to a &#8220;new type&#8221; of autism and which was published in the Lancet is suing the British Medical Journal (BMJ), its editor-in-chief, and a journalist for defamation.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Wakefield filed the lawsuit in Texas on January 3, claiming he has been deliberately defamed by the BMJ for a series of 3 critical articles and accompanying editorials it published in early 2011 about his study, which linked the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine to a &#8220;new type&#8221; of regressive autism and bowel disease described as autistic enterocolitis (AE).<\/p>\n<p>The Lancet ultimately retracted the study in 2010. However, the research, which received wide media attention at the time, was blamed for plummeting MMR vaccination rates.<\/p>\n<p>In early 2011, the BMJ published the series of 3 articles and editorials charging that Wakefield&#8217;s study was &#8220;an elaborate fraud&#8221; and that he intended to &#8220;make a vast profit&#8221; from marketing a diagnostic testing kit.<\/p>\n<p>According to the court filing, the BMJ, its editor-in-chief, Fiona Godlee, MD, and investigative journalist Brian Deer published the articles &#8220;with actual malice&#8230;intended to cause damage to Dr. Wakefield&#8217;s reputation and work as a researcher, academic and physician and to permanently impair his reputation and livelihood.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Wakefield also claims the articles &#8220;contained unfair, incorrect, inaccurate, and unjust criticisms of findings&#8221; reported by Wakefield and his 12 coauthors.<\/p>\n<p>The court filing also claims the defendants engaged in a &#8220;mass propaganda campaign&#8221; soon after the articles were published, noting that the BMJ did not disclose that it had received &#8220;significant revenue&#8221; from vaccine manufacturers, signaling a possible conflict of interest, until 2 months later&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/wakefield-lawsuit.pdf'>Wakefield lawsuit<\/a>Click for Wakefield&#8217;s complaint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The man who in 1998 launched the vaccine-autism scare wants his day in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[306],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicine-drugs-devices"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6SqJi-2qD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}