[wholesome music] [tense music] [HBOMB laughing] Don't worry. Vaccines are perfectly safe, according to me. You might notice a little prick. [laughing maniacally] Oh!
Hello, and welcome back to Hell. I'm just vaccinating
my profiteroles, immunizing them against
the horrendous disease known only
as Not Enough Cream-itis. Unfortunately,
while vaccines are great at stimulating my balls, in humans they've become quite
the controversial topic. In the late '90s
an anti-vaccine movement started to pick up steam claiming
that they cause autism, and the movement has plenty
of washed-up celebrities flushing it including
what's-his-name, and that one,
and some more. Here's 45th President
of the United States Donald Trump coming out
against medicine. He once famously twet: I mean, of course they aren't.
Horses aren't even real. But if there's
an entire movement of people with documentaries and web sites
and Facebook pages with thousands and thousands
of members backed by the former U.S. President, why does everyone else seem to think they're
obviously wrong? Has the mainstream medical
establishment science-cucked a majority of people
into thinking they're safe so they can keep making money
selling them? The vaccine debate is complex
and multi-layered, and hasn't been resolved
for over two decades so obviously it needs me to come
and put an end to it in the space
of a single YouTube video by doing what I'm best at:
destroying things with my mouth. [chewing loudly
and aggressively] Oh, hi, Mum! Was I vaccinated? [Mum exhales sharply] Have you been looking into moving out lately, son? HBOMB: N-- [upbeat music] Now, the clever clogs among you
will know that there was an anti-vaccine movement
of sorts in the 1800s when they were first introduced, but that movement died out
on its own a long time ago of small pox. The main argument
in the modern movement is that they might cause autism, so let's see what on paper
this claim is supported by. Yes, I just ended a sentence
with a preposition and if that annoyed you,
we get it. Your school was expensive.
We're all very happy for you. Part One: The Easy Version, in case you don't feel
like watching this whole fucking video.
[booming] In 1998, a study came out
alleging a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. MMR vaccinates against measles,
mumps, and rubella, which saves kids from having
to get multiple painful shots and parents from having
to know what rubella is. It was published
in "The Lancet," a very well-known
medical journal which made it seem credible. However, the paper
was eventually found guilty of being bad. The science turned out
to be bonkers and multiple other studies
on literally millions of children did not show
that there was a link and the paper
was eventually retracted by the journal
that published it. [booming]
So retracted that it literally has "retracted" written
all across every page in big red letters. My printer just does black
and white, so I've actually got an artist's
impression of the real version. So far that's some pretty
shaky ground on the anti-vaccine side, but later new evidence
came out that-- oh, that's it.
That's all the evidence. This segment is over now-- Part Two:
The Existential Horror of-- wait, that's it? No, seriously.
That's all the evidence. There is nothing else
even remotely credible. There are some fringe
pet theories as to what chemical in
the vaccines causes the autism, but since vaccines
don't cause autism, they're kind of putting
the cart before the squid, here. The anti-vax movement had next
to no evidence 20 years ago and now they have even less. But hold on there, daddy-o. Sure, you can sum up the entire
issue in--52 seconds, wow. But really I don't think
that's good enough. Everyone who's anti-vax
at this point has probably already heard
and isn't convinced by the easy version. I mean, if you're on
the fence about vaccines, you're not gonna change
your mind because someone told you there was a paper once
but it got retracted, no matter how much they
pitch-shift their voice in post. [playing slowly]
Bonkers! But what if you did want
to change someone's mind on topics like this? The data on this issue
is discouraging. Research shows that when someone
becomes personally invested in an idea they can become
very closed-minded or worse: a YouTuber. Political science professor
Brendan Nyhan and his team spent
three years studying how over 1,700 parents reacted
to various different attempts to convince them
to vaccinate their children and found that no matter
what they tried, parents who started out
against vaccination didn't change their minds,
and worse, trying to correct false claims
about vaccines actually made some parents
more against vaccinating. Nyhan told "The New Yorker," "It's depressing.
We were definitely depressed." Now, as a fellow fan
of logic and reason, I'm also doing great, but in today's particular--
shall we say… [flames roaring,
people screaming] It's extra pressing
that we figure out how to get everyone on the same page
with regards to public health. So the purpose of this video
isn't just to point out a group that's wrong
about something. The real question is, when someone is wrong
about something-- not just this--
how do you change their mind? Now, personally,
I'm not sure how to do that. If it was easy for humans
to change their mind about stuff then this video wouldn't need
to exist, would it? But maybe we'll find
some answers by exploring what convinced people
vaccines might be dangerous in the first place. We should probably begin with that old 1998 study because let's be honest: how many people on either side
of this discussion have actually read it? People don't read
scientific papers. They check out the blogs
or videos of people who they already agree with
and they tell them what the science said. And, I mean, same. I heard all the other people say
the science was bad and I believed them, and the anti-vax people probably
just believed whoever told them it was true,
so to be unbiased about this, let's really start
at the beginning, look at the original paper-- and that's the wrong page. Let's actually read
this old paper and see what it has to say
and come to an honest conclusion about its findi-- [WOMAN] Five minutes lat-- [HBOMB] What the fuck? This is why people
are against vaccines? This is the worst fucking paper
I've ever read in my li-- [groovy music] ♪ ♪ [HBOMB slurping from a cup] [exhales]
[setting cup on table] Right, let's talk about
the study. I'm calling it "The Study"
because its real title was, "Ileal-lymphoid-nodular
hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental
disorder in children," which is a bit
of a tongue twister. I had to do a not-insignificant
amount of Googling to find out whether it's
pronounced ee-leal or eye-leal. Don't know why I bothered. If I got it wrong it's not like you would have noticed. The paper's lead author
is Dr. Andrew Wakefield. I'm sorry.
There's a mistake in my script. The paper's lead author
is disgraced ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield is seen by many
as the founder of the modern
anti-vaccine movement since he was behind the paper
that started the whole thing. Let's keep an eye on that gu--
oh, fuck! The smoke machine occasionally
goes off on its own for no reason and I can't
be bothered to get up. The paper's supposed purpose
was to investigate a connection between bowel disorders and developmental issues
in children, in particular targeting signs
of autism. So, first off,
what's a colitis? Right, uh, hold on.
[keyboard clacking] Okay, colitis is inflammation
of the colon, one of the main symptoms
of bowel diseases like Crohn's disease,
for example. [DEMONSTRATION WOMAN]
Colitis. [HBOMB] By the way,
we're gonna use words like bowel,
colon, and intestine interchangeably
in this video. Don't let it confuse you.
They're mostly the same thing. If you're a doctor,
pretend you didn't hear that. The paper says
non-specific colitis because it's not looking
for specific kinds of inflammation. It's looking
at whatever inflammation these children happened to have and seeing how they compare
because maybe they're all linked and maybe they're even linked
to the autism. According to Wakefield, he just happened to notice a lot
of kids with both autism and bowel disorders
and he launched the study to investigate a possible link. [fog machine hisses]
[shouts] But what does all that have
to do with vaccines? I mean, surely it must
have found something for it to have caused
all this controversy. Well, allow me to list the paper's highly
scientific findings. Some of the parents
of the children in the study think they remember
the autism symptoms starting after the MMR vaccine. No, really.
That's it. [READER] "Findings: Onset
of behavioral symptoms "was associated,
by the parents, with measles, mumps,
and rubella vaccination." [HBOMB] For literally decades,
right? I've been hearing about
this paper and I've assumed that there must
have been something there. Like, something
to at least explore or discuss or debunk. Everyone lost their
fucking minds over it so surely there's something, and I finally go and read it, and it's just a bunch
of fucking parents' opinions. There's nothing there! I can't fucking believe this! [soothing jazz music] Like, seriously,
the disconnect between the attempts at real science
and the stuff the parents think they remember is, like,
so jarring. Like, next to colonoscopies
and biopsies and graphs
of urinary excretions, you'll suddenly
get sentences like: [HBOMB] A note from your mother
isn't science. It's how you get out of P.E. I'm sorry, coach.
I didn't really have polio. [exhales] Maybe some home
decorating will relax me. I love this poster
because I'm smart and now all my guests
will know I'm smart. I have tons of guests.
I'm a party animal. I have a charisma
of at least six. [grunts] [quirky music] ♪ ♪ [grunting] ♪ ♪ I wonder why "The Economist"
interviewed Contrapoints and not me.
[grunts] There.
Perfect. Does that look all right to you? No, Rachel,
don't wave the camera. That's not
how people communicate. Page three of the study provides a table listing each child's
behavioral diagnosis-- largely autism--and also
what their parents identified as their exposure,
the thing which-- in their opinion--
caused the diagnosis. Of course, most of them blame
the vaccine. Now, while a bunch of opinions
are about as useful in science as a bath made of teeth, we might as well explore how
someone might end up having that opinion. [bright music] It's actually really common
for us to-- actually, hey, Angie?
[ANGIE] Yeah? [HBOMB] Could you draw me
as a ferret, please? [ANGIE] Okay.
W--why? [HBOMB] I will not explain why. It's actually really common
for us to assume two things that happened to us around
the same time must be caused by one another. That's how we as ape people
whose fur fell off one day think about things
with our tiny, godless little monkey brains. If you ate some strange
new berries and got sick that day, you're basically programmed
to connect the two for the sake
of your own survival. This is the one in ten times that evolutionary psychology
is real. The rest are fake, Malcolm. But these correlations we make in our heads between events
aren't necessarily true. It might not have been
the berries. It could have been all
the budget energy drinks you import from Thailand.
You know what? Maybe you can have
too much Carabao. Another big problem here
is how humans relate to spans of time,
just like how under quarantine, you might not even notice
four months passing because nothing happens anymore. If someone coughs on you today
and later in the evening you start to feel a bit sick, a lot of people might remember
being coughed on and assume that's how
they got it, but illnesses can take days
or weeks to incubate. Maybe you don't remember
the time you got coughed on two weeks ago by the guy
who was delivering the last crate of energy drinks. Oh, Carabao,
why is it so hard to quit you? Win football tickets? I can't wait to be in a crowd
of people again! [coughing] The table claims some of the parents noticed
the symptoms a few weeks, days, or even hours
after getting the vaccine, but I do have to wonder how easy
it is for someone to recall something as complex
as the exact date of the onset of a child's
behavioral symptoms. A BBC documentary from back
in the day interviewed a parent and they said on camera
that their son became autistic overnight after the vaccine. [MOTHER] He had the fever,
the high temp-- [MOTHER] He was never
the same again. [HBOMB] Even the interviewer
was like, "Literally? Literally overnight?
Like, are you sure?" The signs of autism
appear gradually and grow over time. When parents first take notice, there could easily be
other signs they missed. Another better documentary about
all this we'll get to later actually found parents
who realized they'd made this exact mistake. [NARRATOR] Stacy and Damien
no longer believe that their daughter's autism
was caused by MMR. After researching
and remembering Rebecca as a baby,
they realized that she had already shown symptoms
before she was vaccinated. [HBOMB] Parents don't
necessarily notice the symptoms until
they're fairly obvious, but that doesn't mean
the symptoms weren't there or their child
wasn't autistic beforehand. I'm bringing this up because
it's important to make the distinction that whenever
someone describes something like their child's
first symptom, what they are really describing
is the first symptom they personally noticed. Here's a timeline
of the first two years of a child's development. Statistically,
the average age that symptoms of autism become
noticeable to parents is around 12 to 18 months. Children in the UK receive
a dose of the MMR vaccine from between 12 to 15 months. Isn't it possible
that these parents are blaming
a coincidental event? You can even see evidence that
this happens in the paper because some
of the other parents blame other totally
coincidental events. One of them blames
their child's autism on an ear infection they got
a week before they first noticed the symptoms. Do ear infections
cause autism now? No.
No, of course not, but if it was the only
other thing that you remembered happening to your child, you can see how someone might end up assuming they're related. Before this study was released, there were a few
very small clusters of parents that thought vaccines
caused autism or other illnesses. JABS--the Justice, Awareness and Basic Support group-- wow, they really worked hard
to make their name say JABS-- had been around
for a few years beforehand. The founder of JABS--
Jackie Fletcher-- asserts to this day that her son suddenly became
severely autistic ten days after
his MMR vaccination, and has frequently tried
to sue the government and MMR manufacturers
for money over it. It's important to recognize
that statistically even if vaccines
are perfectly safe, you're going to get
a small amount of parents like her who are convinced
that vaccines are harmful because they got one
right before something like this happened. Before there was
a scientific paper and thousands of news pieces
telling them to, there really weren't
that many parents of autistic children
who blamed the vaccine. According to a pro-JABS piece
made in May 2002 when the scare was happening, there were thousands of members, but before all that, there were only about 30 sets of parents at best, and speaking of groups
being too small to be statistically meaningful, another big problem--
or to put it another way, a small problem,
is sample size. [laughs] Please hold your applause
until the end. On its own, a study of a small sample size like 12 children can't prove
anything about the rest of a population. I've made this point
about people drawing sweeping conclusions
from small studies before. However, it's important
to understand sample size criticism
in the proper context. Studies on small groups happen
all the time in science for a good reason. They're often called
pilot studies and they're useful
for figuring out how a bigger study should work
in preparation for the real thing
or for checking to see if there's something worth
looking into in the first place. A fraction of parents
of the tens of millions of children who've had
this vaccine saying they think there might be a connection
is at best grounds to do a better study on a bigger group
of children to find out if this connection
actually exists. We're going to come back
to this later because someone had
the opportunity to do one of those
and what they did with that opportunity
is very interesting. That was an awful take.
Let me do that again. In summary,
the science is really bad. It's bonkers. The study even admits it doesn't
prove anything at the end. [HBOMB] The next sentence
is hilarious. [HBOMB] The issue being that
they don't have any proof. In science it's expected
to admit the limitations of your study. Papers and medical journals have high standards
for what constitutes solid proof.
However, Wakefield is using this
as a shield. By hiding behind the defense
that he hasn't claimed to prove anything, he can then speculate about a lot of things
he hasn't proved. For example,
these children appear to share similar--
though non-specific-- bowel problems. I say appeared because, well,
we'll come back to that, but Wakefield takes
this vague collection of similar things
and concludes with the theory that could make his career, that the vaccine
may cause autism and it happens through
the bowels. [NARRATOR] "We have identified
a chronic enterocolitis "in children that may be related "to neuropsychiactric
dysfunction. "In most cases, onset
of symptoms was after measles, "mumps,
and rubella immunization. "Further investigations
are needed to examine "this syndrome
and its possible relation to this vaccine." [HBOMB] In literally the final
sentences of the paper, Wakefield invents a new disease
that combines bowel disorders and autism and then speculates
that MMR vaccination might cause the disease
he just made up. This is absolutely buck wild,
as some would put it. It's like medical fan fiction. Sure, he admitted it just may be
and said we need more research to prove anything, but now his made-up disease
is in a published scientific paper in one of the most prestigious
medical journals in the world. Journalists with little
to no scientific knowledge go on to report on this paper
as if it's discovering this new disease. [NARRATOR] Doctors
at the Royal Free Hospital believe they may have discovered
a link between the combination vaccine
and a bowel disease that can progress to autism. [HBOMB] What are you
talking about? He admitted he didn't
prove anything and then wildly speculated
at the end! No! There is one last
really weird thing about this paper
we haven't mentioned yet, which most people don't seem
to mention, which I find a little bit weird
and indicates that no one has actually read it. Towards the end of the paper--
[groans] Wakefield tries
to find other papers that kind of support
his findings, so he really has to scrape
the bottom of the barrel. [NARRATOR] "Fudenberg noted that
for 15 of 20 autistic children, the first symptoms developed
within a week of vaccination." [HBOMB] Wow, that's a really
interesting thing to "note," isn't it? We should probably actually go read Fudenberg's paper and see what it has
to say for itself. [quiet rumbling] Fudenberg's 1996 paper
cited here is from "Biotherapy," a fringe journal for quacks
that actually went out of business two years later. The paper is a pilot study
on the effects of a substance called Dialysable
Lymphocyte Extract on children with autism. In addition to alleging
that several of the children had become autistic within
a week of getting vaccinated-- are you ready for this? Fudenberg claimed that
this extract he'd created could cure autism. [NARRATOR] "Of the 22
with classic autism, "10 became normal in that they
were main-streamed in school and clinical characteristics
were fully normalized." [HBOMB] "Became normal!" Holy shit! And you wanna know
something funny? You wanna know something funny? At the time that the study
was published, Fudenberg didn't have
a medical license! It was revoked the year before
because he was caught stealing controlled substances
from his job for "personal use!" The South Carolina Medical Board
found him guilty of engaging in dishonorable, unethical,
or unprofessional conduct. He admitted he'd done it
in the hearing, too. So he got caught stealing drugs,
admitted it, got fired,
lost all credibility, probably wasn't even allowed
within 100 yards of a stethoscope,
and then a year later, he cured autism,
according to him, and you know he's trustworthy
because he admitted to stealing all
those medical supplies. What I'm trying to say here is, ex-doctor Hugh Fudenberg's paper is one of the most obviously
bullshit things I've ever read, and Wakefield had to cite it
to create a precedent for his findings. This is the best he could get. You can see why it's a bit weird
no one brings this up, right? In scientific circles, everyone who read
Wakefield's paper--or worse, bothered to check the sources
it cited-- had, you know,
a few minor concerns. It was so concerning that
The Lancet published-- in the same issue--a response
to the paper. "Vaccine adverse events:
casual or coincidental?" It points out numerous problems, some of which we've
discussed here already, and has some words to say
about fear-mongering about vaccines like this. [NARRATOR] "Vaccine-safety
concerns such as that reported "by Wakefield and colleagues
may snowball "into societal tragedies when
the media and the public "confuse association
with causality "and shun immunization. "This would be tragic because
passion would then conquer reason
and the facts again in the UK." [HBOMB] This commentary would
probably have seemed darkly apocalyptic at the time,
but in retrospect, it was a shockingly
accurate prediction. Like, they knew.
They fucking warned us. So even before the paper
was in the public eye, other doctors and scientists
were looking at it and saying, "This ain't it, chief." Is that still
a current reference? I've aged ten years
in the last two weeks. Time is meaningless. But despite a lot
of obvious concerns and clear weaknesses, Wakefield published
the study anyway, and then--and this is weird-- he immediately held
a press conference about it. This isn't something that anyone
normally does in science, especially not after publishing
a five-page study that admits
it didn't prove anything. The paper was so small
and its findings so insignificant that it barely
even qualifies as a paper. In fact, it was published
in "The Lancet" as an early report.
See? The top left corner? Zoom in on it.
It's--it's there. [dramatic music] You gotta be quicker
on the draw than that. Holding a press conference
for this is something you do if you want attention
for your controversial paper, not if you're trying
to do science. And here's where
the whole thing really started. During the press conference, Wakefield pretended his study
had discovered a risk so earth-shaking that
the government should stop using
the MMR vaccine and replace it with measles,
mumps, and rubella vaccines given separately. [HBOMB] This is the moment
that changed everything. Wakefield told a room full
of reporters that based on his study, he felt the MMR vaccine could be putting millions
of children at risk. The mainstream media were
in love with the notion that the paper
had found something so they ran with it
all the way into Hell. [tense music] ♪ ♪ The paper was bad,
sure, but mass movements against
vaccines don't start because of the release of a paper. Like we discussed,
people don't read papers. I didn't read it for,
like, 20 years, and you know who else
didn't read it? Every journalist
who reported on it. But when a doctor publicly says
the government is putting millions of children
at risk with vaccine rolled out nationwide. Even if his papers are load
of all shit, you gotta report on that. The possibility
was too tantalizing to ignore. It's really hard to get across
how unavoidable the issue was. If you even glanced at a TV
or a newspaper in the mid-2000s, it was,
"MMR might cause autism," or it was,
"Princess Diana is still dead." [REPORTER] Measles
kills thousands of people every year,
but today questions about the vaccine. [REPORTER] Vaccination could
be linked to a new side effect, a combination of bowel disease
and autism. [HBOMB] Hundreds of articles,
news pieces, and documentaries were made
about the potential significance of this study. They rarely show or discuss the contents
of the paper itself, but the doctor behind it
came out against MMR! There's a potential link! There's a potential link,
everybody! Panic! And you know what happens when every news resource is screaming about
the potential risks of a vaccine? You make millions
of people terrified to vaccinate their children. I was growing up during
the MMR scare, and the main thing I remember
from the TV news at that time was big shots of pointy needles
and children screaming as they get given an injection
and ominous voice over saying, "Oh, these vaccines might
be dangerous." It's almost like TV deliberately
scares people for ratings because that's how this works.
That's the entire point. If you want to know
why thousands of parents think MMR gave
their children autism, it's not because they came
to that conclusion on their own. We've seen how, before all
of this reporting happened, only a teeny tiny minority
of parents made the connection between autism
and the vaccine. They could only find
seven parents of autistic children who blamed
MMR in the original study, even. The only thing that changed
was how many news outlets were telling everyone
the vaccine might cause it. After years of the media
telling them it could have been the jab, some parents started
to believe it. [JOURNALIST] The symptoms
started to appear when he was two,
soon after he had his MMR. [HBOMB] His parents didn't
believe it was a coincidence because every news resource
was telling them it might have something to do with
the vaccine and trusting that the media
had done the work and knew what they
were talking about. They believed what they
were being told. The end result of publications
and broadcasts like this was a lot of concerned parents,
a lot of unvaccinated children, and a whole lot of new cases
of measles. [JOURNALIST] With inoculation
rates falling to dangerous levels-- [JOURNALIST] In Ireland, the debate over MMR
has been fueled still further by a measles outbreak
which killed three children. Whatever the official evidence, which rejected a link
between MMR and autism, fewer parents were prepared
to take a risk. [HBOMB] I wonder
why that might be. Could it be because every time
you turned on the television, there's footage
of a screaming child with a needle in its arm? Once literally
every other doctor had come out saying, "Look,
there's no proof. Please stop doing this," a lot of journalists
got really defensive suddenly and started putting out
pieces like, "No, I will not stop reporting
scare-mongering bullshit!" Wait, the same journalist
wrote both of these. She just spent, like, six months
of her career complaining about people criticizing her.
Amazing. So, what was Andrew Wakefield
doing during all this? Well, he was getting
interviewed nonstop and having clips played
in almost all of these news pieces. He was like a celebrity, especially to the growing list
of parents newly convinced by the media's reporting that
he'd discovered why their children had autism. For a couple of years, Andrew Wakefield was the sort
of guy who you filmed in slow motion in black
and white. Holy shi-- Wakefield used his time
in the spotlight to spread even more doubt
about MMR and continued to repeat the recommendation
that parents get separate vaccines instead.
At the press conference, in interviews in the aftermath, and four whole times on
a 23-minute video tape he sent to journalists, he claims he thinks
separate vaccines would avoid the risk of autism. [JOURNALIST] Andrew Wakefield
says he appealed to the chief medical officer
more than six months ago to give worried parents
the option of the single vaccine. [ANDREW] My recommendation
has been that children should continue to be vaccinated
but to separate the vaccines. There is sufficient anxiety
in my own mind that with the safety--
the long-term safety of the polyvalent--that is the MMR vaccination
and combination-- uh, that I think that it should
be suspended in favor of the single vaccines. There is sufficient anxiety
in my own mind that it would be sensible
to divide them into separate doses. There is sufficient anxiety
that the parents must have a choice of how they protect
their children. [HBOMB] It's really kind
of interesting that while the modern
anti-vaccine movement insists that all vaccines are dangerous
in some way, the guy who started the fear
and anxiety that led to this
was pro-vaccine. [ANDREW] We advocate
vaccination. This is not anti-vaccine
in any way. [HBOMB] He was really specific
about the fact that he thought parents should keep vaccinating, just that they should use
alternatives to MMR. [ANDREW] The single vaccines
are likely in this constec-- uh, context to be safer. [HBOMB] Remember that disease
he speculated about at the end of his paper? That there might be some kind
of bowel disorder caused by MMR that then leads
to autism? This came up in the media a lot
as well. [JOURNALIST] Could the MMR jab
be causing a strange new kind of bowel disease that was turning
the children autistic. [ANDREW] Measles, mumps,
and rubella given together may be too much
for the immune system of some children to handle. There is a--a bowel disease, a new syndrome associated
with regressive autism and that that may be related
to MMR. [HBOMB] Eventually he even
came up with a name for it: Autistic Enterocolitis. Wakefield's theory when he tries
to explain it is that the almost dead
measles virus present in the MMR vaccine can get stuck
in the intestine somehow causing all that inflammation
they apparently found in the study--
more on that later-- which leads to it
not digesting certain foods like bread and milk properly,
turning them into--his words-- a morphine-like substance which
then leaks out of the bowel and into the brain
causing autism. [ANDREW] Morphine-like
substances from the gut that you and I produce
in our diet from milk and wheat are actually
getting access through that leaky gut into
the developing brain. [HBOMB] This theory is, uh,
very strange. One of the many strange things
about it is that it specifically implicates the measles part
of the vaccine. If measles,
when it's in a vaccine, can cause a syndrome that leads
to autism, how could you possibly be
so certain that the separate vaccine for measles
would be safe? [ANDREW] The risk of this
particular syndrome developing is related to
the combined vaccine--the MMR-- rather than the single vaccines. [HBOMB] Okay, sure, but why? On what basis
are you saying that, Andy? How could a doctor so easily
make that recommendation? [ANDREW] And it may be that
giving the measles on its own reduces the risk of this
particular syndrome developing. [HBOMB] He just keeps saying it! [ANDREW] My opinion, again,
is that the monovalent-- the single vaccines,
measles, mumps, and rubella-- are likely in this consten--
uh, context to be safer than
the polyvalent vaccine. [JOURNALIST] That's
the MMR vaccine? [HBOMB] There's actually
a real reason why he recommended the separate vaccines so much. Uh, we'll get to that later. Here's the one example
I could find of an interview asking him
to explain himself. [INTERVIEWER] But even supposing
the measles element of the MMR vaccine had deposited
the virus in the intestinal tissue
of these children, a single jab of measles
might do the same. [ANDREW] Theoretically,
it might. [INTERVIEWER] But you're
advocating a jab-- single jabs instead of MMR.
[ANDREW] I said theoretically. [HBOMB] Oh, only theoretically.
Well, that's fine, then. What a great scientist. [INTERVIEWER] But if you say
it may do, then how can you advocate
a single jab of measles even if there's only
a theoretical possibility that it might damage, uh,
a child? [ANDREW] While that
question mark exists, at the very least, parents deserve a choice for how
they protect their children against these infections, whether it be with the--
the MMR vaccine or whether it is with
a single vaccine. [HBOMB] He always finds a way
to pivot back to how in the midst of all of these
questions and concerns-- which he started--parents
should at least have the option
of a separate vaccine. Honestly, you'd think he
was some kind of salesman for alternative vaccines. Autistic Enterocolitis is not--
and has never been-- accepted as real
by Gastroenterology, the field specializing
in the stomach and intestines. But an ordinary person--
or worse, a journalist-- might not understand it enough to know that
it doesn't make sense. So of course it got reported
as an interesting new idea. [NARRATOR] It was a bold
and controversial theory. [HBOMB] That's an interesting
choice of words. This piece by that
really defensive lady Melanie Phillips--one
of the most well-paid journalists in Britain
at the time-- is still continuing to spread it
in this very article about being criticized
for spreading it. She calls it
a "unique gut-brain disease." When you imagine a new disease, of course it's gonna
sound unique, Melanie. No red flags popping up around
the fact that no disease has ever functioned
like this before? No?
Fucking hell! This completely unprove--
"unique, bold, and controversial" theory
was irresistible to Phillips, a "Bigot of the Year"
award-winning writer famous for also denying climate change,
calling Obama an Islamist, describing a group
of liberal Jews as "Jews for genocide," and opposing both
Irish independence and gay rights, which she dismissed
as an attack on the traditional family
by cultural Marxism. It's not shocking that Phillips
was wrong about MMR. It's her job to be wrong
about everything. The truly shocking thing
about this is that for once the entire rest
of the British media were on the same side as her, uncritically regurgitating
everything Wakefield said to millions of people. This completely irresponsible
reporting caused fear, vaccine hesitancy, kick started
an anti-vaccine movement that's still here today, and resulted in the deaths
of children from completely
preventable diseases. And that's the tea, sis. [slurps] There's real liquid in there.
I'm not doing a bit. I will spill it if I try
and show it to you. I'm sorry, but there's--look. See?
It's real. It's not tea, though.
It's coffee. I'm not a farmer. Perhaps the only thing
more frustrating than seeing the media
do everything it can to push pseudoscience
was how everyone actually addressed the topic
of autism. Autism is a complex condition
we still don't fully understand with many variations
and symptoms and severity, but the media
never mentioned that. They deliberately went looking
for the most severe and extreme cases
they could find and then filmed them
to exploit for television. Children who couldn't
communicate verbally or had severe physical
disabilities as well. The intent to make
the "MMR question" as serious as possible resulted in an almost
pornographic obsession with suffering children. They went out of their way
to portray autism as a horrific tragedy
that it's worth risking a disease to avoid,
and yeah, measles is a disease. Like, it kills people. It can cause incredibly
severe complications that are with people for life. We as a society are no longer
really aware of just how dangerous measles
can be because we don't see all those complications as much
because of vaccinations. Measles, mumps, and rubella
are legitimately dangerous and potentially life-threatening
diseases and it says a lot about how
we think about neurodivergence that it's worth risking that
to avoid being autistic to some people. Hell, I was in Waitrose
a few months ago. I never shop there
but I pretend to so I can use their unnecessarily
massive parking space, and I saw them selling
a magazine with this on the cover. "Reignite your child's brain
with alternative treatments." What they mean there is,
"alternatives to treatment." This is not how a healthy
society discusses its people. Autistic people have to navigate
a world that refuses to accommodate them
in the slightest to the point they're
regularly confronted with the idea other people think
their brain has gone out. Come on.
Get it together, Waitrose. You're the up-market upper class
rich people supermarket. You're supposed to be
the smartest. What's going on there? The only thing that needs
igniting here is your fucking shops. Did we get clearance
to say that? Okay, that was a joke. While the MMR scare
was at its height, the entire media landscape
was a unified front in saying wrongly that autism
is the worst fate imaginable for a child and much worse
than dying of measles. So a lot of kids didn't
get vaccinated. Then again,
it wasn't all bad. Some parents just vaccinated
their children for measles, mumps,
and rubella separately. Which, by the way,
was pretty expensive. [JOURNALIST] But they don't want
their child to have MMR. They'd rather pay
for single vaccines at £60 a shot. [HBOMB] 60 quid? By jolly, gov'na! Imagine millions
of parents wanting an expensive alternative vaccine
because all of a sudden a study had come out saying
that the regular one might cause autism
and a prominent scientist was cautioning against it! [JOURNALIST] He'd urged
the government to split MMR
into separate vaccines. [ANDREW] Giving the measles
on its own reduces the risk of this particular
syndrome developing. [HBOMB] Why, whoever
was producing and selling the alternative vaccine would
be in for a fucking gold mine, wouldn't they? They'd make an absolute fortune! Here's the funny thing
about that. Part four: Andrew Wakefield
is a Lying Conman who wanted your mone--oh, sorry. That puts me at risk
of libel, doesn't it? Hold on.
Let's revise that. [keyboard clacking] Part 4: In My Opinion, Andrew Wakefield
is a Lying Conman Who Wanted Your Money. So we have Wakefield's paper
and the implication that MMR might cause autism in there, and you have Wakefield saying, "Hey, get separate vaccines." You and I can both agree that
there might be a conflict of interest there if--
if Wakefield was selling an alternative vaccine, right? We can all agree that would
be fucked up, wouldn't it? Here's Wakefield's patent on
an alternative measles vaccine. This little piece of shit
was filed six months before the study was released,
so, uh, what's going on there, Andy? Something you want to tell us,
buddy? [booming] It's time to introduce someone new to the story. Brian Deer is an award-winning
investigative reporter with a long history of exposing
medical fraud, specializing in
the pharmaceutical industry, and the perfect sort
of person for the middle of this health scare. Deer was one
of the few journalists who didn't simply accept
what Wakefield was saying at face value and thought
to dig a little deeper into the study and what he
was really up to. Deer called the hospital
Wakefield worked at with some basic questions, the kind that Wakefield apparently wasn't used
to getting. Within three hours of doing so, Wakefield's publicist--you know, doctors hiring publicists
to promote them. That happens all the time-- had made a complaint about Deer
to the newspaper he worked at. Deer, of course,
only grew more interested. His eventual 2004 documentary-- "MMR: What They
Didn't Tell You--" is the better documentary
I mentioned before, and by better I mean blew
the doors off of Andrew Wakefield's
whole scheme. It was Deer who discovered
Wakefield's patent. Let's take a look
at that patent now. [NARRATOR] "The present
invention relates "to a new vaccine/immunization
for the prevention and/or prophylaxis against
measles virus infection." [HBOMB] Now, I'm not a big time
science-talking fancy guy, but this sounds a little bit
like a measles vaccine. The patent was submitted
in June, 1997 so Wakefield had done most
of the study and then rushed to patent
a method of making a competing vaccine
he could sell later, and guess what? If you look closely
at the patent, you can see a familiar name
on there next to Wakefield's. Remember Hugh Fudenberg? The quack who thought he
could cure autism after having his medical license revoked? His name is also on the patent! He's credited as a co-inventor
of this vaccine! Fudenberg's company--
the very real and legitimate-sounding Neuro Immuno Therapeutics
Research Foundation-- is listed on the patent along
with a business address. In the documentary where
he revealed the existence of this patent, Brian Deer went to that address
to try to find Fudenberg and discovered the company
had already shut down and the building had become
a real estate agency. Looking that address up now
it appears to be a hairdresser's. [BRIAN] Doesn't look like one of America's premiere
research foundations. [HBOMB] When he did find him, Deer asked Fudenberg about
the whole thought-he-could-cure-autism
thing and, well, I--
[laughs] [dramatic music] [HBOMB] Just
to quickly remind you, this man is the co-inventor of Wakefield's
alternative vaccine. You know what?
You got me. Vaccines might be dangerous! And just in case it wasn't
extremely obvious what a hasty fucking scam Wacky-field
and his one friend who agreed with him
were putting together, F--Fudenberg's name
is spelled wrong on the patent! The other inventor
of this vaccine besides Andrew "Jeremy"
Wakefield is one Hugh Fundenberg. Nice one, Jeremy. By 1999, Wakefield
was the director of several medical businesses. Immunospecifics Biotechnologies,
LTD, and Carmel Healthcare, LTD, named after his wife
at the time. She later divorced him. He started shopping
these companies around for investors based on the very
convenient patent he'd got right before the health scare
he caused. But in addition to the vaccine, Wakefield had another product
in mind. If Autistic Enterocolitis
turned out to be real-- big if there,
I know-- that would mean there would be
a completely new market in the form of testing
for this new disease. Wakefield planned on producing
and selling diagnostic kits meant to test
for Autistic Enterocolitis. A private
and confidential prospectus for potential investors acquired
by Brian Deer claimed: [HBOMB] Describing the target
audiences as: [HBOMB] These prospectuses
also calculated how much these businesses would be worth. [HBOMB] Adjusting for inflation, that upper estimate
is about $72 million. If you think that's bad,
years earlier, he estimated
a much larger number to the for-profit branch of the Royal Free
Medical School. £72.5 million per year-- almost $200 million
in today's money. In an inventor school investor
meeting document that Deer obtained, Wakefield teased they
could charge premium prices for the technology he intended
to develop. Wakefield also became director
of a third business, Unigenetics, LTD.,
in the Irish Republic. Wakefield applied for and was successfully
given £800,000-- more than $2 million today--
in government funding to begin developing the test, and this is all on top
of how much money Wakefield would get
if he managed to get the funding to manufacture
his alternative vaccine. Companies like Axcan Pharma
in Canada were paying to fly him out
to discuss his business plans. According to Brian Deer, he was also negotiating
a consultancy with Johnson & Johnson
and developing connections with both Merck
and SmithKline Beecham. This guy was sure he was gonna
be rolling in money. I wonder if this might point
to a financial incentive to discredit MMR. [inhales deeply] Hmm… [screams] Watching Wakefield
repeatedly push for getting alternative vaccines
"just in case" is really chilling to watch now. You have to watch him sit there
and create demand for his planned future products, and no one watching knows
what he's up to. They think he's a doctor just
asking questions about MMR. No wonder he wasn't
anti-vaccine. He wanted you to buy his! That said,
there were a few roadblocks to the success
of these businesses. The first is that Autistic
Enterocolitis is a fake disease
he just made up, which means it's very hard
to invent a test for it. [booming] In Ireland at Unigenetics, Wakefield brought in
a colleague, John O'Leary, to try to get the testing kits
to work. O'Leary claimed his test could
find measles virus in the bowels
of autistic children. [JOURNALIST] He'd found
measles virus in most of the samples he'd tested
from children with autism and bowel disease. [HBOMB] This is the closest
Wakefield or any of his cohorts would ever come to proving Autistic
Enterocolitis exists, but this quickly fell apart. Every other lab that tried
to recreated his results found the same thing. The only way his equipment could get the results he
was getting is if there was contamination
or if his machine had been calibrated wrong. It turned out later it was both! Test tubes that didn't
have measles in them tested positive for measles. O'Leary had an 11.1% stake
in Immunospecifics, the company which would
be selling the kits which would have made him
incredibly rich if the test
had eventually worked, but strangely he stopped
being able to get these results once people started scrutinizing
his work, so that's £800,000 of tax payer money down
the drain. The second problem
was that potential investors who looked into this alternative
vaccine even slightly would notice that the guy
who co-invented it was a doctor who
had just been fired and thought he could cure autism
using his fucking bone marrow! So I guess what I'm saying
is there was a slight delay in finding people willing
to fund it. Finally as Wakefield tried
to launch his businesses, there was a critical shake-up
at the hospital he was working at. While many
of the Royal Free Hospitals higher-ups were fans
of Wakefield's controversial paper
and the attention it brought to the hospital
and medical school, and some of them
were even involved directly with his new businesses,
in late 1999, the school got a new head
of medicine named Mark Pepys. Pepys was a specialist
in fields close to what Wakefield
was speculating about in his papers, and like most scientists
who knew anything about the subject,
could tell something was up. Wakefield was sent a letter
voicing concerns about the scientifically
unjustified basis of the work the companies were doing along
with the incredibly obvious conflicts of interest
happening here. You know, you kinda have
a vested interest in proving a link
between vaccines, bowel disorders,
and autism, when you intend to make millions
of pounds off it. Even then, they volunteered
to support Wakefield more but not in the way he wanted. Remember that thing I said
about pilot studies? I'm sure you do.
You have a good memory. I really respect that about you. They offered
to continue employing him but only if he undertook a new,
much bigger study to actually explore the original
study's findings properly. He was offered help with a study
on 150 patients to confirm what he had only
really speculated about so far with a study of 12. [HBOMB scoffs] "Autistic Enterocolitis"
is in quotes. They don't believe him.
It's great. This would be any
legitimate scientist's dream. The freedom and support
to fully explore a hypothesis and discover
the truth. Wakefield agreed to perform
the study but then he never actually
did it. Pepys would later go on
to say Wakefield was "a wanker and a fraud." Eventually in 2001, after repeatedly ignoring calls
to do the study he'd agreed to do,
he was told to leave. Check out this article
all about-- oh, I love journalism! [JOURNALIST] Last November, Andrew Wakefield left
the Royal Free Hospital by mutual agreement. [HBOMB] Capitalizing on
his perceived reputation with the public as a man
who had discovered a link between vaccines
and autism, Wakefield said: [HBOMB] This was meant
to sound conspiratorial like, "They let me go because
I'm making MMR look bad," but it seems like he
was just unpopular with people because they could tell
he was a fraud, and a wanker. At this point, Wakefield's career as far
as real medicine was concerned was over and his businesses failed
to get off the ground because he no longer had
any legitimacy left. What pharmaceutical company
or other investor is gonna give money to a doctor
who just got fired for refusing to prove
the thing he's trying to get funding for even exists? In 2003, Deer's investigation
was in full swing and beginning to uncover all
of this. He also made a really
interesting discovery about something
that took place during the original study. You know that whole Autistic
Enterocolitis thing? Both his theories
about MMR's danger and his new businesses
making testing kits for the disease rested
on being able to find the measles virus
in the intestines of children with autism. [ANDREW] The question
we've been asking, is measles virus present in the intestine
of these children? The BBC documentary covered
this search extensively with Wakefield saying
in an interview that proving it was there would
require finding the RNA of the virus in tissue samples. [ANDREW] The gold standard now
is to find the gene of the virus in there. [HBOMB] The big deal here
is if Wakefield can't find the gene of the virus
then his theory is wrong. In these interviews, Wakefield is trying to imply
that they've only just started looking
for the virus so they haven't found it yet
but that's okay. They've only
just started looking, right? This turned out
to be a lie. Deer discovered that Wakefield
had already looked for it and it's not there! Dr. Nick Chadwick worked
on Wakefield's paper and was a specialist on methods
of finding measles RNA in tissue samples. Wakefield actually helped
co-author some of his work, so of course Wakefield
had Chadwick look for measles RNA in
the tissue samples taken from the children in the study. These were the children
Wakefield was sure must have measles somewhere
in their guts since he was blaming their autism on it. However,
when he looked, he never found
any measles whatsoever. [HBOMB] This means
that Wakefield already knew before he even published
the paper that measles couldn't be found in the guts
of autistic children. [Brian] Dr. Wakefield's
theory was that it was measles virus itself
that was responsible for a bowel disease
and then leading on to some kinds of autism
and you found no measles virus? [NICK] That's correct. [HBOMB] The final
published version of the 1998 study doesn't have
Dr. Chadwick's name on it even though he did a lot
of work for it. Chadwick later wrote in
a signed declaration that he specifically asked
for his name to be left off the paper because
he wasn't comfortable with how Wakefield
was still pushing his theory even though he'd found zero
positive tests for measles. By this point he
was already planning to launch a business
selling testing kits based on this theory, so he ignored the work
in his own lab that disproved him
and kept saying he thought measles could cause
a bowel disease that leads to autism
and kept looking there for measles
for years afterwards. The BBC documentary is about
his hunt for the measles virus because even four years
after launching his paper, he still hadn't found anything
else to back up what he was saying. I actually have to
give some credit now to this BBC documentary. Even though they mostly side
with Wakefield and assume he's going
to find the proof soon, there is one segment where
the interviewer's like, "Wait a second!" [INTERVIEWER] Shouldn't you have proved it
before you said it? [ANDREW] As I say,
proof may be 10, 15 years away in terms of definitive
scientific proof. [INTERVIEWER] So shouldn't you
have waited? [ANDREW] No. [HBOMB] Obviously after
discovering all this, Brian Deer had even
more questions for Wakefield, which Wakefield was continuing
to avoid. [BRIAN] I've been trying now
to speak with him for a year. We even wrote
but he didn't reply. [HBOMB] Deer eventually
just went to an autism conference
Wakefield was speaking at. After his presentation, Deer approached him
with questions. [HBOMB] There's something kind
of cathartic about just how guilty Wakefield acts here. Like, he's happily
hanging around after his talk casually answering questions
from concerned parents and other reporters
and then the instant he recognizes Brian Deer-- the guy he's been
actively avoiding for over a year--he turns
and leaves the room as fast as he can. Wakefield's only defense against
his clear financial incentive to discredit MMR is to run away
and hope you leave him alone, and since Deer clearly
wasn't doing that, Wakefield decided to escalate. A few months after this footage
of him heroically running away like a baby from basic inquiry
was broadcast, wacky Andy filed
a defamation lawsuit against Channel 4,
who produced the documentary, "The Sunday Times" who published
some of Deer's reporting, and additionally
he sued Brian Deer's personal web site,
briandeer.com. Can you imagine being
that petty? In 2004, ten of
the paper's original 13 authors came forward to publicly retract
the interpretation section of the paper. Half a decade after
its publication, a vast majority of the people
who worked with Wakefield on his paper have gone on record
to say they think his conclusions are bollocks. At this point Wakefield's
study's coffin has fallen through the floor
from the sheer weight of all the nails that
have been hammered in it. So that's the foundational study
of the anti-vaccine movement: a hack fraud's bullshit paper
claiming that a handful of parents knew better
than all doctors so he could sell an alternative
competing vaccine that he patented, w--which he thought he
was gonna make millions selling! The evidence against
the movement can't get much worse than that,
can it? That was a joke! Part Five:
It Gets Much Worse. Brian Deer didn't stop there. Wakefield was trying
to sue him to get him to stop digging,
and guess what? One of the first rules
of investigative reporting is that if they try and sue you
for finding things out, you're probably onto something. [BRIAN] I mean, he brought me
into the story via virtue of the fact that years ago
he sued me. [HBOMB] He discovered
that two years before the paper was published, Wakefield had been hired
by a lawyer to conduct the study. The lawyer,
Richard Barr, had realized there
was potentially millions and millions of pounds
in bringing a class action lawsuit
against MMR manufacturers on behalf of parents
of autistic children, but since there
was no actual evidence the vaccine did this, he paid Wakefield to find some. Wakefield charged Barr £150
an hour for the time he spent working on the study, eventually totaling
over £435,000. In today's money that's more
than $1.1 million. This was more than eight times
his yearly salary at his job at the hospital. Six months before "The Lancet"
published the study, Barr sent Wakefield
a letter saying--and I quote-- actually, I got Shaun to say it. [HBOMB] Oh, okay. This whole thing was bullshit,
wasn't it? And hey, remember JABS? JABS was involved
with the lawsuit and it turned out
their members helped to recruit many of the parents
to the study in the first place. I swear to God, this isn't one of the joke logos
we made. This is actually the header
on their Facebook page, this low resolution
shitty nightmare. Jackie Fletcher,
the founder of JABS, was also a litigant
in the lawsuit. They needed her connections
to the dozen or so other parents who actually blamed MMR
to be able to do all of this. Some of the parents
were even involved with the lawsuit, too. It's kind of clever,
if you think about it. A couple of parents
blamed vaccines for their child's autism
and wanted to sue its manufacturer, but there was no evidence
it wasn't just a coincidence, so they told their opinions to a doctor their lawyer
had hired who would then report those opinions in a paper,
and now in court, you can say there's
scientific evidence implying a link between vaccines
and autism, even though the link is just
those opinions from before. There's probably a word
for this trick. Idea laundering?
I dunno. Not all of the parents knew
the study was being done to help a lawsuit, but they were all
chosen deliberately. However,
like we explored earlier, not many parents in 1996 blamed
vaccines for autism, so they had to cast a wide net
to even find the couple of parents they did. Child 11 wasn't even
from England. He was from California. If a contact of JABS
or Richard Barr thought you might suspect vaccines
made your child autistic, you and your child were
being flown around the world to take part in this study,
and even then, some of the parents still turned
out not to blame the vaccine. I cannot stress enough what a fucking shambles
this paper was. Most of the other doctors
working on the study had no idea the guy running it
had been paid hundreds of thousands of pounds
to discredit MMR. According to Chadwick's
later testimony, Wakefield worked separately
with each individual scientist working on the study instead
of bringing them all together which would have been
the normal thing to do. This afforded Wakefield
a good level of secrecy about his motives. The other scientists must have largely thought they really were looking into a connection between autism and bowel disorders in children. So even the doctors
and scientists involved were being lied to
and tricked into lending their time and effort
to a study being done to help a lawsuit make
some lawyers a lot of money. Once all of this came out, Wakefield was,
medically-speaking, fucked. While he'd been asked to leave
his post years earlier, he still had a license
to practice medicine in the UK, but amidst all
of these discoveries, the General Medical
Council began a fitness to practice hearing
against Wakefield, going through the records
of the study to evaluate whether his behavior had been ethical. [JOURNALIST] The row he started
dominated the headlines. Now his conduct--not his views--
will be making the news. [HBOMB] This hearing would go on
to last for 217 days making it the longest in General
Medical Council history and longer than the
O.J. Simpson trial. This is Wakefield's only
legitimate achievement. He made such a fucking mess, it took that long
to pick through it all. Meanwhile, remember when
Wakefield sued Brian Deer? This would turn out to be
the worst mistake he ever made in his life.
[gavel clacks] Because Wakefield's libel case
was related to accusations of what he did during his study, that meant that the records
of what happened in the study were evidence in the case now. I mean, how else were they
gonna prove it was libel or not? The judge agreed that Deer had
to be granted access to the confidential un-redacted
medical records of the children from the study. By trying to sue a journalist
into shutting up, Wakefield had accidentally
given him permission to see everything. Deer recalls being sat in a room
with his lawyer reading the medical records
of the children and other records
of what happened in the study while Wakefield's legal team
were rushing to get a cab to take them to the courthouse
so they could drop the suit and stop him reading it
as fast as they could. [engine revs,
booming] Deer got home that night to a call from his lawyer saying the case--
[Windows update chimes] New firmware available?
Thanks, Windows. Deer got home that night
to a call from his lawyer telling him the case was over,
and as a fun bonus, because of how lawsuits work
in the UK, Wakefield had
to pay Deer's legal costs, the check for which Deer keeps
proudly displayed on his website,
but Deer wasn't done yet. Wakefield had just dropped
a lawsuit to stop him finding things out. [BRIAN] But in the context
of that lawsuit, a great deal of information
was disclosed to me by Wakefield's lawyers
and it was quite clear I had to continue. [HBOMB] Deer continued
his research and also attended many
of the GMC's hearings about Wakefield's conduct
which discussed many of the same records
he just dropped a lawsuit to hide,
and based on all of this, he put the pieces together
and figured out exactly what happened during the study. The result of his work is an absolutely
incredible series of articles first published in
the British Medical Journal. [Windows update chimes] There's another
fucking firmware-- why is there so much firmware? Deer figured out who some of the previously-anonymous
parents of the children in the study were
and showed some of them what the study said about
their children and it turned out
the paper was lying. For example,
he showed the medical records to the father of child 11. [BRIAN] And he looked
at the paper and he just looked
at what it said about his own child and he said,
"That's not true." And that was, uh,
one of the parents of one of these children in the paper. [HBOMB] In a correspondence
with Deer, he literally wrote: [HBOMB] He told Deer Wakefield
had said his son was the 13th child
they'd looked at and wasn't included
in the paper, and that's why none
of the information in the study seemed
to describe his son. According to Brian Deer, Wakefield had rewritten
his son's medical history and lied to him
to cover it up, and this wasn't the only parent who had their story changed
by Wakefield. You see, for the study
to be useful in Barr's lawsuit, they needed to establish
a "temporal link" with the vaccine. Since this is the age autism
usually develops, they needed it
to be within 14 days, and if possible,
even closer. I mean, otherwise it might seem
like it was just a coincidence, which it is,
but like child 11, the onset of autism
wasn't convenient enough in almost any
of the other children. The table suggests that eight
of the 12 children's parents claimed the symptoms happened
within 14 days but according
to Brian Deer's reporting from the Medical Council
hearings, many of the parents
never said this, and most of the children's
medical records put their symptoms starting
way after this time period with some
of them showing symptoms of what could have been autism
before they were vaccinated. Almost every child's autistic
symptoms either started way too late to be useful
in the lawsuit or way too soon. Wakefield just lied and changed
the times and allegations of the parents around until
the paper said what he needed it to say. This is the thing that makes
so much of what he said during the scare really
fucking infuriating. Like, he would constantly bring
up how he was just listening to the parents and reporting
what they were saying. [ANDREW] We believe--we trust
in the parents' story. [HBOMB] If you think there
was a problem with my shitty study, you're calling all
of those parents liars. How dare you? [ANDREW] When they say to you, "I believe my child regressed
after the MMR vaccine," do you take that seriously
or not? Damn right, you do.
Damn right, you do. [HBOMB] He got all high
and mighty about how you need to believe the parents
when he had made up most of what the parents had said, and the media fucking ate
it up, too. [JOURNALIST] Andrew Wakefield
is one of the few doctors to listen to parents who believe
their children were damaged by MMR. [HBOMB] He's the only doctor
who listens to the lies that he wrote for a lawsuit
he was being paid to help with. Fucking hell! Remember that new syndrome
Wakefield came up with? Now we know why he did that. To pursue
a class action lawsuit against the vaccine's manufacturers
and convince the court of the vaccine's danger,
to quote a judge, "Barr needed it to cause
a distinct and specific clinical syndrome." If all the kids just
had random bowel disorders, there wouldn't be a clear
enough link to the vaccine, but if they all had
a fancy new disease he could argue they
were all caused by the same thing. Wakefield invented
Autistic Enterocolitis which he repeatedly called
a genuinely new syndrome in the media so the lawsuit
could justify itself. Of course,
to do this, all the children's
bowel disorders would have to actually
look similar enough that they could reasonably
be called the same thing. The paper listed 11
of the 12 children having some form
of non-specific colitis creating the illusion that they all had
a similar disorder. According to
the actual medical records, only three of them had any major
inflammation whatsoever. The study had a pathologist
on board to determine what sort of bowel diseases
the children had. When she and her team
ruled out colitis in over half of the children, which would obviously have
been bad for the lawsuit, Wakefield brought in
a second pathologist who had worked with him before
to run the tests again. When the second pathologist
didn't even make mention of colitis in his reports, Wakefield ignored both
of them and just wrote in the paper
that 11 of the 12 children had similar
non-specific colitis. Wakefield went over the heads
of everyone on his team who didn't find any colitis
and decided by himself that all the children had
a special new gut disorder that causes autism! What the fu-- [echoing]
But that's not all! You know how most
of the children in the study were diagnosed
with a form of autism and how, like,
that's the entire point, that most of them had autism? Like, that's the whole thing?
[inhales sharply] Well, it turns out that some
of the children reported as autistic in the study
didn't even have autism! [DEATH STAR GUY] Standing by. [booming] [HBOMB] Child seven
was never diagnosed with autism before, during,
or after this study. He was referred to the study
because child six-- his brother--was diagnosed
with autism. Wakefield reported that
this child was also autistic and started showing signs
of autism 24 hours after being vaccinated! I mean, why not if you're
just making shit up, right? Child 12 had also never
been given an autism diagnosis. The developmental specialist who
diagnosed them said they had: But did not diagnose them
with autism. Wakefield, who,
just to remind you, is a gut surgeon with no psychiatric expertise
whatsoever, decided this was enough for him
to say they were autistic, and since their parents
didn't blame the vaccine, he said: And made sure to mention
the child had MMR at 15 months just so you know it started
soon after the vaccine even though the parents
didn't blame it. Oh, and while he was there, he diagnosed them with chronic
non-specific colitis, too. You can see why Wakefield
dropped his lawsuit as fast as he could when Deer
got permission to read these, right? This is likely why he never
did the larger study when he was asked to. Once this fraudulent paper
was out, all the extra attention
and scrutiny he gained would have made it impossible
to lie and get away with it again. To this day, no attempt to recreate Wakefield's findings
has ever succeeded. The paper that started
the obsession with the connection
between autism and vaccines was a total fraud, crafted by a lawyer
and the opportunistic doctor who he bought,
and in the last 20 years, data from millions
and millions of children all over the world indicates
no link whatsoever. The only paper that came close
to showing that link is a study so full of lies
that even before it was out, scientists who worked
on it were asking to have their names taken off. The paper wasn't
just badly made. It wasn't just questionable. It wasn't bold
and controversial. It was a lie for money, but the worst thing about
this study was that somehow even that wasn't
the worst thing. [haunting wind blowing] Hey, folks,
the next section deals with some pretty heavy stuff
so if you're not into stories of child abuse, uh,
skip to the next chapter. As we've already explored, Wakefield was trying to discover
a new disease linking autism and bowel disorders,
so during the study, he did everything he could
to find that link. For this reason, each child
underwent a rough battery of invasive procedures. The children spent a full week
at the hospital, during which they
were frequently sedated, given laxatives,
had blood samples taken, and then they
were given colonoscopies, lumbar punctures where a needle
is inserted between the bones of your spine to extract fluid, MRI scans--again,
under sedation-- electroencephalograms
where wires and electrodes are run to the patient's head, and a variety of other
uncomfortable procedures. A doctor once described
this list of tests as a lot even for adults
to go through, never mind autistic children. Now, there's this thing
in medicine called informed consent. Doctors can't just do
invasive procedures on people. You have to inform the patient
of the potential risks and dangers and you
can only move forward with their approval. In this study,
the children were very young, and some of them--
emphasis on some--were autistic. This meant
the children's parents had to give informed consent
for them. Andrew Wakefield wrote
a handout to parents to go with
the consent form describing the procedures
and their potential risks. CIRCARE, a human rights
organization, acquired a copy of this handout, and while the form does mention
almost every procedure Wakefield intended to do, it doesn't mention any of the risks associated
with them. I'm serious. The word "risk" is literally
not written anywhere on the form. So let's talk about the risks of some of these procedures. For those of you who don't know, a colonoscopy is when
a large tube with a camera in it is inserted through your rectum
all the way up into your guts. Normally, this is an important
and safe diagnostic procedure. It's the most accurate test
for rectal and colon cancer and this saves a lot of lives. Sorry, I'm gonna take a moment
and turn this video into a public service announcement
for colonoscopies. Um, get one. I'm being serious. If you're an adult,
especially over the age of 45, and you've never had
a colonoscopy, please seriously consider
getting one. I've lost an uncle
and a close friend to bowel cancer
at shockingly young ages. It's a really common cause
of death, and if they catch it early,
it's treatable. Colonoscopies are perfectly safe and often
life-saving procedures, but in children whose intestines
are smaller and weaker and harder to maneuver in, there are risks
of serious complications. The scope can puncture
the intestine which causes bacteria
from the gut to leak out and cause infection and other serious
internal damage. Risks of complications
are significantly higher for children five years
or younger. [DOCTOR] We try
to be very careful to come around corners. [HBOMB] And these risks
are genuine. As part of the attempts
to find more evidence later and follow up on the original
1998 study, a five-year-old autistic boy
was given a colonoscopy that went exceedingly wrong
and was left fighting for his life
with multiple organ failure after his bowel was perforated in 12 places during
the procedure. There was no medical reason this child needed
this procedure. He was just being used
as a guinea pig to find any proof they could that Autistic Enterocolitis
was real. The Royal Free had
to pay almost £500,000-- roughly $1 million today--
in damages to the boy and his parents for causing
lifelong disabilities that required full-time care. His parents reported that when
they gave consent, they had not been told
of the risks. If this is true, what happened here
is an assault. They almost killed this child,
and in the 1998 study, they inflicted this procedure
on children as young as three. Wakefield's consent form insists
that these procedures are usually tolerated well
by children and that it
is entirely painless. It gives zero mention
of the very real risks of inserting several feet
of a scope into a child. It even says, "If your child
becomes distressed "or the procedure proves
too difficult, it will be performed
under general anesthetic." The form doesn't mention
the risks of this anesthetic, either. This normal consent form
for a colonoscopy makes incredibly clear
that there are risks of perforation and bleeding and the possible
adverse reactions to being sedated, too. In case you're watching, Andy, this is what informed consent
looks like, you piece of shi-- Wakefield needed these parents
to consent to these procedures. His paycheck was resting
on finding something in the bowels of these children
that could possibly point to the disease he was trying
to invent, so he wrote a handout that
conveniently didn't mention how risky some of these
procedures actually were, and from other accounts given
to Deer about what happened during the study, the children's experiences
were far from safe and painless. [BRIAN] "Nurses were leaving
and saying they didn't like "what was being done
to these children. "Junior doctors were unhappy. "It needed three people
to hold these kids down "in some cases just
to have blood taken. "These are difficult children
to explain to what is going on. "I feel very sorry
for the children who I feel were being abused." [HBOMB] Children were fainting
and vomiting and trying to resist
the testing. They had to be force-fed some of the fluids required
for the tests. They couldn't give one child
their lumbar puncture because he
was uncontrollably vomiting from all the other procedures
that had been done on him and he was sent home. Another child's lumbar puncture
went so badly that he had to be rushed to a different hospital
for treatment If you do stuff like this
to kids in your study for no clinically
justified reason, that's child abuse! Wakefield treated the children as if they had genuine
bowel conditions. To that end, almost all of them were given anti-inflammatory drugs
for the disorders he'd made up for them. These medications often have an increased risk to children, particularly under
the age of six. The risks of adverse events includes life-threatening
complications including increased bleeding,
increased risk of infections, and other severe side effects. Some of these kids
had problems communicating, which would make reporting
any side effects they were experiencing
very difficult, further increasing the risk
of severe problems if something went wrong. Considering that barely any
of these children actually had bowel disorders, Wakefield was essentially
putting children at risk of the side effects
of these drugs for no reason while he looked for proof
of the disease he was trying to invent to make
a lawsuit look good. The Medical Council
also discovered that during the study, Wakefield gave
an experimental drug to one of the children
without waiting for approval from an ethics committee. The drug was called… [tape clicks]
Wait a second. [high pitched
high-speed playback] The paper is a pilot study
on the effects of a substance called
Dialysable Lymphocyte Extract on children with autism.
[tape clicks] Did Wakefield test one of Fudenbergs
autism-curing drugs on one of the children
in his study? What the fuck? Thanks, Andy. I'm sure whatever
you gave those kids was perfectly safe. I mean, if this genius
was behind it-- [BRIAN] Where--where does that
come from? [FUDENBERG] My bone marrow. [HBOMB] To convince
the child's father to agree to let him administer
this drug to his child, Wakefield offered him a job
as managing director of a company making
and selling the drug. [tape clicks]
Um, okay. My producer told me
I can't say that. There's no way of proving
that happened behind closed doors,
so just to clarify, we don't have evidence
that Wakefield offered a man a job to give
his son a drug. It might just be a coincidence
that the father became managing director of a company
that would profit from selling the drug
if it worked. Maybe he just happened
to have equity in the company
that would be making the drug that was experimentally
given to his child. We will never know for sure how
that happened. [clears throat]
[tape clicks] Let's just walk
through that again. Andrew Wakefield might
have offered a cushy job to a guy to let him experiment
on his kid with a drug that he probably got from a guy
who got fired for stealing medical supplies,
wasn't a doctor anymore, and thought he could cure autism
using his bone marrow. The Aristocrats!
[chuckles] On top of all of this,
during the investigation, the Medical Council found out
that during one of his own children's
birthday parties, Andrew Jeremy Wakefield lined up
all the other kids at the party and offered them money
for their blood! I--I have to try
and explain this. In order to find any potentially
useful evidence for his study for the lawsuit, he needed the blood
of non-autistic children so he could compare it
and see what he could find, but to get the blood instead
of, like, putting in a request for non-autistic
children's blood, or, like, calling for volunteers
to--to come to the hospital and give their blood, and without running it past
an ethics committee, he offered his children's
friends five pounds for their blood!
[laughing] And no, that's not, like,
an allegation that someone might have made up. Wakefield told people that story at a conference in 1999. [crowd laughing] [HBOMB] At the hearing
he claimed to have made up the part about throwing up
and fainting for dramatic effect. His best defense
of his extremely unethical and weird behavior was that
he made some of it up. Shockingly, telling
the ethics committee that he was a fucking liar
didn't help his case. Speaking later in an interview, Wakefield defended
the birthday party child blood bribes saying
it was all totally fine. [ANDREW] The only problem
was that it did not have an approval from
the hospital ethics committee. That does not make it unethical. [HBOMB] He's trying
to "well actually" a fucking ethics board! After reviewing all
of this in 2010, the longest inquiry in General
Medical Council history, concluded that Andrew Wakefield
had failed in his duties as a doctor, acted against the interests of his patients,
and was, you know,
a lying conman. Sorry, that one was me. And he was struck off
the medical register making him no longer able
to practice medicine and officially not a doctor, so whenever someone calls him
a doctor in videos now, they're making a mistake. Look, I don't wanna single
this guy out, but you--you--don't put "doctor"
in his name. He's not a doctor now! Even in the documentary
he made about himself in 2016, he can't put doctor in front
of his name. He has to put MB, BS. Well, we know he's at least
one kind of BS, if you know what I'm saying. To quote the Council's charges, he showed "callous disregard
for any distress or pain the children might suffer." That same year, "The Lancet" finally formally
retracted the original study. According to "The Lancet's"
editor, Richard Horton… Well done, Richard. Here's a round of applause
for you. [hand slaps] Better too late than never,
I guess. That's not really an expression,
is it? The conclusion of the inquiry
is protested by Wakefield's
remaining supporters. [CHANTING] We're with Wakefield.
We're with Wakefield. [HBOMB] While
a news crew attempts to interview one
of his critics, one of his supporters attempts
to shout him down and make sure
he can't say anything while another off-screen
holds up a book insisting it is they who
are being silenced. The irony is, apparently,
lost on them. Wakefield appeared before
his flock to say this
was all completely unjust. [ANDREW] And I invite anyone
to examine the contents of these proceedings and come
to their own conclusions [HBOMB] I think we just did,
buddy. Wakefield did lose a lot
of his popularity when the extent of his abuse
and fraud was made known, but he still had
a few dedicated fans, often the parents
of autistic children who'd followed him
so far that they refuse to accept what he did. To Wakefield,
these desperate people are the perfect market. I suspect the main reason
he turned up in the last few days
of his hearing was to advertise the book
he'd written all about it on national TV. The book alleges that
the Medical Council hearings are just trying to crush him
to protect vaccines. He titled the book
"Callous Disregard" after one of the Council's
comments about him. It's trying to be
an ironic reference like he's accusing
mainstream medicine of callously disregarding
the victims of MMR, but I don't think he considered
the implications of quoting a doctor pointing out
he abused children on the cover of a book with
a big picture of his face on it. It's a real "If I Did It"
situation." Also in the dedication, he thanks
his long-suffering wife who's with him here on
the cover. She's not his wife anymore,
though. I guess she suffered enough. And like separate vaccines
before it, Wakefield made sure
to recommend his book in every interview he got. [GUPTA] These numbers,
the dates were all fabricated to sort of make a case. [ANDREW] Dr. Gupta, please,
I urge you, go and read my book.
You will understand it. Many people don't. [HBOMB] It's very funny watching him try to sell his merchandise now that everyone knows
he's a fraud. [ANDREW] If you read my book, you will be able
to read the truth, and has the BMJ read my book? Have the doctors
who apparently looked at all the records read my book? No, because the truth is in
that book, "Callous Disregard." [ANDERSON] Well sir,
I've read Brian Deer's report which is incredibly extensive. Sir, I'm not here
to let you pitch your book. I'm here to have
you answer questions. [ANDREW] If you read the record
that I have set out in the book,
you will see the truth. [ANDERSON] But sir,
if your lying, then your book is also a lie. [HBOMB] Wakefield's defense against Brian Deer's
allegations-- now that suing him to shut him
up has failed disastrously-- is to say Deer is a hit man paid
by vaccine manufacturers to ruin his career. [ANDREW] He is a hit man. He's been brought in
to take me down because they are very, very concerned
about the adverse reactions to vaccines that are occurring
in children. [ANDERSON] Wait a minute, sir.
Let me stop you right there. You say he's a hit man and he's been brought in
by they. Who is they?
Who is he a hit man for? This is
an independent journalist who's won many awards. [ANDREW] Yeah, he's--
[chuckles nervously] And he's, you know--
who bought this man in? Who is paying this man?
I don't know. [HBOMB] Who is behind
Brian Deer's reporting? Follow the money! Also, buy my book, please. [ANDERSON] Wakefield went on
to claim later in the interview that you're being paid
by the Association of British Pharmaceutical
Industries. Are you?
[BRIAN laughs] No, I'm not. [HBOMB] In 2011, "New York Times Magazine"
staff writer Susan Dominus caught up
with Wakefield. Though Wakefield presents
himself to her as someone whose career
was destroyed for going against the dogma
that vaccines are safe, Dominus is careful to point out
that he does this while signing copies of his book
for an enormous line of loyal followers, one of whom is a tearful mother who blames herself for not
preventing her child's autism. At the time the article
was written, Wakefield lived
in a beautiful house in a reclusive
and expensive neighborhood in Austin, Texas, surrounded by many acres
of hills and forest. [HBOMB] The book made him
a decent amount of money as have his many paid
speaking engagements at anti-vaccine conferences
where he's lauded as the celebrity who got
the movement started. There's the hundreds
of thousands of pounds he got paid
to do the study, of course, and the multiple documentaries
about him and his life can't have been too shabby
for him. It's genuinely shocking
how obviously he's just grifting
anti-vaccine people for as much money as he can. His 2016 film,
"Vaxxed," is available at a discount
on his web site if you buy it in a pack of ten. "Give a copy to your
local legislators, educators,
and medical professionals!" Wakefield wants his followers
to pay him to do advertising for him. When I look back at footage
of the last day of Wakefield's hearing, I'm inevitably looking back
at myself ten years ago when I saw the same footage live
on TV. [TV hisses]
At the time, I saw these people
as Wakefield's defenders but in a way they
were also his victims. For a decade now--no,
since I was a teenager, I've been thinking about
this woman with the sign saying, "Don't stifle
uncomfortable science." I remember I first noticed her
because I saw her and thought, "Wait, is she wearing
a Playboy scarf?" Surely the most
uncomfortable thing for these people here must be
the possibility the man they're here to defend
has lied to them for money. For someone who'd sided
with Wakefield during the scare, accepting that he had lied
would mean taking on some of the guilt for helping
to spread it. One of the worst things
about Wakefield's actions is he's made
these people complicit. Maybe Wakefield actually cares
about these people. Maybe not.
But either way, their money spends just
the same. I wonder how many
of these people bought his books
or his documentaries. I wonder if any of them stop
and think about how they've made him rich. Some of these people
are extremely vulnerable, parents of children
with disabilities, some of which require
full-time care, who fell for Wakefield because
he was offering them an explanation for why
these things happen. It brings me no joy to tell you
they paid for this view. [CHANTING] We're with Wakefield.
We're with Wakefield. We're with Wakefield.
We're with Wakefield. [audio stuttering] [HBOMB] At the end of all this, I ask the eternal question asked of every major fraudster
in history. How could someone do all this? Cause all this fear and doubt
that has led to real, tangible harm against
your fellow human beings? Why would someone do that? Uh, money.
Thank you for watching. [dramatic classical music] ♪ ♪ [guitar music strumming] There's probably a lot
of people you could blame for anti-vaccine beliefs getting
as far as they have. The anxieties people have right
now didn't come from nowhere. Wakefield's legacy is built into
the very DNA of modern vaccine hesitancy. Or the RNA,
am I right? Nice one, Kat.
This is very clever. Whenever you try to trace
a trend of skepticism about vaccines far enough, it almost always leads back
to the fear and anxiety that started in 1998
and the men behind it. Take for example Bill Maher. Maher is a proponent
of the possible link between vaccines and autism
and frequently has anti-vaccine activists
on his show. Granted, he also has people on
who think that's ridiculous, so that's kind of
like being fair and balanced. His general stance is that
vaccines can be good but he doesn't really go
for them because he's got a better idea. [BILL] Uh, I am not
a germ theory denier. I understand that germs
and viruses cause diseases. I may have been
a little cocky about it because I discovered
from first-hand experience that I could stave them off
better with proper nutrition. [HBOMB] If your child dies
of measles, it's because he didn't eat
his vegetables. Bubonic plague? Skip a trip to McDonald's,
sheeple! Throughout the years, Bill has repeated over
and over his distrust of vaccines
and the possible side effects they might pose. I've tried to find an example
of him citing a source or giving some kind of data,
but no, it's always this general sense
that people think something might be wrong. [BILL] There's all these parents
who say, "I had a normal child,
got the vaccine--" this story keeps coming over
and over. [HBOMB] Lots of parents are
saying stuff and that's basically evidence. And of course there's
the old stand-out, "Lots of people feel like me." [BILL] I was attacked for saying
we should look into this and I don't believe in it, and lots of people feel
the same way. I've heard a lot of stuff
about feelings being more important than facts, so this is basically science,
right? [ALEC] Bill, you having us on
the show and rehashing all these problems
you got yourself into on your last show, it's like going on a date
and talking about your ex-wife. [cheers and applause] [HBOMB] If an intellectual titan
like Bill Maher thinks vaccines might be dangerous, he must believe it
for a good reason. I did a lot of digging on this
and I found a time when he made a concrete
scientific claim about vaccines. In 2005 he was interviewed
on "Larry King Live." This isn't footage
of that interview. I couldn't find footage
of this one, but there is a transcript
on the CNN web site. During this interview
they discussed the flu shot which King had been taking
for 25 years. Maher tells him the best defense
against disease is to have a strong
immune system-- I guess that's where
the proper nutrition comes in-- and says that the flu shot
is actually bad for your immune system. He cites a strong distrust of what he calls
western medicine, which is a bit
of a Euro-centric misnomer. A lot of non-western countries
develop vaccines and other modern medicine,
you know? Whatever, he doesn't care. The conversation then turns
to the avian flu which was a real concern
at the time. Bill states that he's
not worried about bird flu and gives a fascinatingly
vague list of reasons why. Which was a very clever insight
right up until something like that really did happen. Uh, that's why people
were worried about it, Bill. Bill is such a good
public speaker. The fact that vaccines actually
help stop the disease from spreading and therefor
developing those mutations in the first place
is lost on him. Well, it was, but he got vaccinated
for COVID-19 so clearly he sees
the value now. This is attached
to an announcement that he got the virus
so this week's show has to be canceled. Apparently he's asymptomatic
and feels fine, so I guess vaccines
are pretty good, aren't they? Considering how at-risk
unvaccinated 65-year-olds are for this virus, I'm really glad
he got vaccinated for his sake, but they should probably
just cancel his show completely. I mean, we don't want
to risk losing a national treasure. The reality is a lot
of pseudo-libertarian skepticism about "western medicine"
instantly falls apart the second it has to interact
with reality where people really do die of diseases. For example,
the man he is speaking to. Larry King passed away this year
of complications from COVID-19. Anyway, Maher tells King that
vaccines are just a trick to get money. [HBOMB] If bird flu
had got bad enough, you can guarantee Maher would
have paid top dollar for the vaccine. Anyway, the discussion goes downhill even further for Maher when King points out that vaccines are great
and polio was virtually eradicated
thanks to vaccination. Bill gives this--
[kisses] beautiful reply. [HBOMB] I think Bill really does
a good job of summing up a lot of people's belief
about vaccination here. Maher thinks it's smart
to be skeptical about vaccines right up until
there's consequences for himself,
of course, but his explanations
are all unfounded and unscientific. The best he can say is
there's probably books out there that prove he's right. Maybe, but he's not read them. This isn't skepticism. This is ignorance trying
to sound like skepticism. To bring it all full-circle, it seems like Bill's beliefs
about vaccines are really based on that
big scare that started in the late '90s. After all, the only factoid
he seems to ever be able to remember is that lots
of parents said they were bad that one time,
and that's not even a fact. That's some opinions
he remembers. I'd joke that it's a pity
they don't make a vaccine for confirmation bias, but he wouldn't have got it,
would he? There is, however, one time
in this old interview where he really does attempt
to make a scientific claim. He tells Larry that if you get
the flu shot more than five years in a row, it tenfold increases
the risk of getting Alzheimer's. Hmm, that's a really
specific thing to say. Maybe by checking this claim out
we can figure out who he's getting his beliefs from. I looked and there
are actually studies on the impact of vaccination
on rates of Alzheimer's. Um, the risk of Alzheimer's
goes down. Okay, so this clearly isn't
his source. I did some more digging, though, and I found that in 1997
at a vaccine conference, in one guy's presentation
he said that a scientist had found that this happens. There's no study cited here, but that's at least a source
for Bill's claims. Let's check the doctor's papers
and see if we can find out for ourse--wait a second. I blurred the scientist's
name out by accident. Let me fix that.
[mouse clicks] Dr. Hugh Fudenberg? [Disturbed's
"Down with the Sickness"] No matter how you look at it, a vast, vast majority
of anti-vaccine rhetoric and pseudoscience can be traced
directly back to these two guys. According to a survey of US health care professionals
in 2016, 77% of parents refusing
vaccination for their children still cite a fear
of a link with autism. When people refuse medicine
for their children, they largely point
to the hazy memory of the scare Wakefield started
for money. So, yeah, it's pretty important
to point out they both lost their medical licenses
and their science was garbage, and despite being
an obvious hack fraud conman, Wakefield is still embraced
by the anti-vaccine community. Wakefield was a guest of honor
at Conspira-Sea, the week-long cruise
for all kinds of conspiracy theorists, where believers
of all stripes gather to share their theories
about climate change, the earth being flat,
time travelers, and horses being real. The kind of funny thing
is Wakefield himself seems pretty embarrassed
by this. A skeptic who went on the cruise
noted how unhappy he looked with the implication of being
a hero to a community that absolutely loves
complete quacks. Luckily for Wakefield,
the toilet is full of money, and all he has to do to get it
is lean further and further away from science and deeper
into this culture. He's had to pivot to saying
all vaccines are dangerous because his new
anti-vaccine audience aren't very receptive
to the old claim that, "I'm not anti-vaccine. "Just one vaccine is dangerous, and I recommend mine instead." I don't think these people
would buy a ten-pack of that story. And of course in the middle
of the pandemic that is currently happening, Wakefield emerged
from his mansion to remind everyone that a virus
that has so far killed over three million people is better than being
vaccinated against it. [HBOMB] Presumably of COVID-19. I don't think that
was too dramatic, do you? [HBOMB] The fact the movement
he started is still based almost completely on his lies
is pretty important to point out and in fact it's useful
to point it out because despite
how it might look, the truth can be
a powerful thing. Once Wakefield got chased out
to America and had his medical license taken away, vaccination rates
in the UK recovered. I love this because you can
basically see the effects of Brian Deer's reporting
on a graph. Like, the scare starts
and it gets worse and worse and worse, and then Brian Deer's reporting
comes out, and bam,
it's on its way back up. Like, the truth does make
a difference. And then
when Wakefield's license was taken away, we went right back up to pre-scare levels. Of course, getting chased out
to America meant he started peddling his lies
in America. So, sorry about that. But it does seem pretty clear that the truth helps people make up their minds
about this stuff. Fascinatingly, a lot of Britons
seem to remember the MMR scare and the revelation that it
was based on lies and learned a lesson about
vaccine alarmism. According to polls
of global willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine, other countries start
relatively low, perhaps dimly remembering some people saying vaccines
are bad. Then acceptance grows
as it becomes increasingly clear
the new vaccines are safe. Wait, where's the UK? Well, boys,
we're just chilling up here. We've been through this before,
you see. That's my British accent? It seems like our past
experience with bullshit vaccine scares has inoculated us
against future ones. Kat wrote that line. I didn't find
the one weird trick doctors hate to de-converting people
from being against vaccines and changing their minds
or anything here. What we've really discovered
is that if you lay the whole story out like this, people can do a good job
of making up their own minds. The actual scientific community
works very hard to be receptive to potential
side effects. When even the potential maybe
possibility maybe of one of the vaccines having
side effects came up, the FDA and the CDC briefly
recommended not getting it for a while until later
when they checked and were sure it was fine. Vaccine safety is taken
extremely seriously by medical scientists
and doctors for obvious reasons. Actually, here's a fun example
of how stringent the community is about vaccines. Wakefield's alternative vaccine
was based on such bad science it would never have made it out
of clinical trials. The medical work behind it
was awful. I mean,
one of its author's names is spelled wrong on page one. The science on
the following pages is roughly what you'd expect
from something like that. I think I might actually make
a bonus video for patrons just covering this vaccine
patent because it is wack. Really, Andrew Wakefield
was always doomed to end up as a scam artist. He wasn't very good
at the science when he was a doctor. All the Coronavirus vaccines
currently in use have passed tests and checks that his alternative measles
vaccine would never have done. Wakefield can pretend he's not
gonna get the vaccine and appear at
health freedom summits that recommend you don't get it and instead eliminate toxins
with only affordable products and cooking hacks.
[chuckles] But I certainly hope
for his sake that he just gets the vaccine
in secret because otherwise the next cruise is gonna have
a fucking body count. There is another way the truth
can change people's minds; living proof. If someone thinks
the Coronavirus vaccines might be dangerous, one of the best ways
to help seems to be people around them
getting it and showing them how it's fine. In early polls before
a vaccine was out, a lot of people in the USA
claimed they were going to hold off until they were sure
it was safe, which is a pretty risky decision
considering the danger of the virus versus any possible
side effects of the vaccine. Like, a third of people
who get infected even if it's minor are left
with long-term complications. Like, long-distance runners
are left unable to climb stairs without getting out of breath. People have lost eyesight,
people have lost teeth, and of course a lot of people
have died of the disease, but over time, as more and more people did get
the vaccine, that by itself changed
a lot of minds. The truth is, it was easy in 2020 to have
your doubts about a theoretical vaccine
that no one had had yet, but now when half the people
around you already have it and they're obviously fine, it's a whole lot harder
to have those doubts. Over time the people waiting
and seeing seem to have decided they've seen enough and they want what those guys
are having. So this is my call to action
in case anyone needs it. You should get a COVID vaccine
if you can. You know, get one while you're
there for your colonoscopy. The vaccine makes life safer
for you and reduces the possibility
of passing the virus to someone more vulnerable. So you won't have that
on your conscience, either. I know having a conscience
is virtue signaling now, but still,
it's a nice bonus. And on top of that, if there are people in your life
who could be at risk who need convincing
of the vaccine's safety, you could be
the evidence they need. It's amazing how compelling
seeing other people get vaccinated can be. There is sadly one concerning
thing about the data. There are some people
who started out saying no to vaccination and have largely
stayed that way. Maybe some of them will budge
as more and more people get vaccinated
but there's probably a group who are so distrustful
of vaccines because of everything we've discussed
so fa that they can't have
their minds changed even by the hundreds of millions
of obviously completely safely vaccinated people
all around them. People can invest a lot of ego
and pride in not accepting evidence
that contradicts their beliefs about the world, and it really doesn't help that there are hundreds
of people exactly like Andrew Wakefield
who are ready to tell them everything
they believe is already true and they just
need to buy their supplements or DVDs or cooking hacks and enable people
to convince themselves that they don't need
to do any more thinking. For a small fee,
of course. Ah, come on, though. Comparing Wakefield
to Alex Jones, that's a bit much. There's no way Wakefield
would stoop to-- [laughs] Have you learned nothing? [ALEX] Good to have you here
with us. [ANDREW] It's great to be here,
Alex. Thank you very much. [HBOMB] Changing
these people's minds really should be their job and it's nobody else's fault
that they're struggling with it, but I think the future
of this kind of discussion resides in finding
more compelling ways of communicating the truth
to people who aren't used to hearing it. I hope in some way this video
has helped. In the meantime, while we figure out how
to convince people who seem committed
to being never convinced, at least the vaccine intended
for them can go to someone who's sure they want it. Specifically, me. Please send me their vaccine. I was glad they were testing it
on the old people first but it's been months now,
and I want it. I wanna go outside! Be able to go outside! I want to pretend I shop
at Waitrose again. I wanna use
my free football tickets! I wanna taunt
my former hairdresser with how useless she is
to me now and threaten to turn
her building back into a research foundation! Give me the vaccine, doctor! Hell, give me all of them! Let me combine their power! Soon I will be unstoppable! It's easy to get depressed
and begin to believe that you're basically locked
in a room with thousands of fucking idiots who're
just willing to say stupid shit constantly-- just committed
to just being wrong, but actually,
the more I think about it, I'm actually locked in a planet
with millions of people who do know better
than these people but they're just
so busy being depressed like me at them. Maybe the answer here is that we
just need to accept that we should put the depression energy
into making a difference, into changing the minds
of the people who can be, and into doing what we can
to improve the state of our world around
these people and just let them be mad
and let them continue to be stupid but in a world
where their kids won't die of polio because we got rid
of it for them. Good for them,
ignorant little wankers. Because maybe the hard thing
to do when we're confronted by the scope of these problems
is accept that we really can do something about it. No matter how hopeless
things may seem, the world always can get better, and maybe together someday we can invent a way
of cleaning up this fucking mess in my mum's gara--
in my garage! [lively music] ♪ ♪ Hey, thank you for watching. That was pretty good,
wasn't it? I managed to avoid getting
too preachy at the end there. I'd like to thank my patrons
whose names are scrolling past the screen right now. You guys literally keep
the lights on. I'd like to thank
the sensitivity reader who took a look at some
of the segments and made sure that we were using
the appropriate language when we were talking
about autism. I'd also really like
to thank Brian Deer who's basically a superhero. He's the guy who found out most
of this stuff, really saved the day, and just thank you so much, man. And also while we were making
this video, Brian Deer released a book about
the whole thing. Deer's book, "The Doctor Who
Fooled the World," is basically
the most definitive source on Andrew Wakefield and all
the damage he did. I literally cannot
recommend it enough if the topic interests you
at all. Deer is by far the most
knowledgeable person on everything that happened. I mean, he's the guy who
discovered most of it himself through actual decades
of investigative reporting. I had no idea he was doing
a book until it came out when I was writing this video, and we just barely scratched
the surface of the stuff he covers. There's a link to his site
in the description and it's not an affiliate link
or anything. We're not being paid to do this. I've decided he deserves
your money. I want him to be able to chart
the release of this video on a graph of his sales figures.
That's my personal fantasy. Tell him Hbomb says hi. If you wanna know more about
this whole topic or just check out Brian Dear's
honestly heroic reporting, you should really go read
his book and go to briandeer.com because
it survived the lawsuit and there's some
great stuff there. So thanks to Kat for doing all
of that additional research and for cowriting a lot
of these segments and just generally
fact-checking me. I got a lot of facts wrong. And I'd like to thank my, uh,
intern Rachel, uh, who did great work
with the camera. D--don't do that. [chuckles] Oh, wow, there are more credits.
Oh, my God. Thank you so much for being
so patient with this video. I'm actually surprised we got
it done so quickly, to be honest.
We had a whole production. Like, we had to work
with fact checkers, lawyers in two different
countries to make sure
we couldn't get sued for anything we were saying
about these people, because, you know,
you might have noticed some of the characters
in this story are litigious. We conferred
with vaccine experts, doctors,
science communicators, medical researchers,
sensitivity readers, animators--you know,
someone had to draw the internal anatomy
for that one thing. I made an award-winning
cartoonist for "The New Yorker" spend hours of her life drawing
the courtroom from "Phoenix Wright" for a joke
that went by in, like, 10 seconds. Sorry about that,
by the way. And my poor long-suffering
producer Kat had to coordinate most of this
for me because I was busy editing the actual video. And thank you to my patrons
for watching an early draft of this and giving me feedback. It turns out a bunch of people
who watch my videos are, like, scientists so we got some
really good notes from them. All in all I'm pretty happy
with how this video turned out. So, yeah, that's nice. That said I'm never putting this
much effort into a video again. Forget it. ♪ ♪ Can you believe that
Brian David Gilbert did voices in this video?
That's great. It's amazing. He sent me just video footage
of him dressed as Andrew Wakefield. I didn't ask for him to do that. He just sent that to me. Like, what a cool guy.
That's great. Oh!
[cackling]
Sketchy is such a polite euphemism for fraud.
As a nation, the UK owes so much to Brian Deer for his investigative reporting. If he hadn't done that and relentlessly pursued Wakefield, our vaccination uptake rates could still be as low as France or Germany etc, we probably still wouldn't know the truth of what he did to those children and he could still be practicing medicine to this day.
It's just so fucked up that Wakefield was able to get so far before Deer's investigative reporting.
Being from the UK some of this info had been drip-fed through the news over the years but I didn't know the full extent of how fraudulent the whole thing was. It's crazy how much damage a few determined people can do and how much effort and resource it takes to fix said damage.
H. Bomber Guy is 10/10. This is a great one with good research!
Fucking Aquaman?
Lol "sketchy study" is a serious understatement. The video is a wonderful dive into the whole story and I encourage everyone to watch it.
Hbomb doesn't make videos that aren't worth your time.
Edit: I accidentally said over statement whoops.
He "picked" a sample of 12 kids from anti vaccine groups that planned litigation against vaccine manufacturarers, this whole "research" was funded so they could sue pharmaceutical companies, I cannot understand how this person who by himself has done a huge damage to public health was not finned to the ground for malpractice.
As someone with autism ( me ) Andrew Wakefield can go to hell.
Thank you for posting this. I was hooked after 5 minutes. The story is much, much worse than I thought. And people at the Lancet "knew" this would happen from the start.