To Those With Questions About The Movie Vaxxed

Upon meeting Andrew (who I will refer to as Andy) I was haunted by all of the headlines that preceded him, “Baby Killer,” “Father of the anti-vax movement,” “The fraudulent Doctor who created a fake paper linking vaccines to autism,” “The doctor who performed unnecessary experiments on innocent children,” the list went on and on. But when Andy showed me the documentary film he was making about Dr. William Thompson, the CDC whistleblower, I was blown away. The evidence was undeniable. The CDC had lied to the world. It was the most important story of my life. As an Emmy Award-winning medical producer I knew I had the skill to help Andy deliver a documentary about complicated science, but before I could move forward I had to investigate Andy himself.

As soon as I started looking into the facts behind the case against Andy I realized that I had been repeating a lot of bumper sticker slogans about his story that weren’t actually true. To begin with I was shocked to discover that Andy never came out against vaccines. WHAT?! What Andy had recommended was that parents vaccinate their children with the single Measles, single Mumps, and single Rubella vaccines instead of the triple MMR vaccine, which many parents were blaming for their child’s regression into autism. Seems reasonable enough. More alarming was the realization that the Lancet paper in question clearly states that it does not prove a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Though the majority of parents in the study and tens of thousands world wide have made this claim, the paper admitted that more studies needed to be done before coming to a definitive conclusion.

I was surprised to find that the allegations against Andy were not initiated by a medical investigator or scientific institution, but by a freelance journalist named Brian Deer who wrote a Sunday Times article in the U.K. that was as scientifically accurate as a gossip column. The General Medical Council in the U.K. then used Brian’s imaginative retelling of the story behind the Lancet paper as grounds for a medical trial that ultimately stripped Andy of his medical license.

I had always heard the Lancet paper described as Andrew Wakefield’s fraud, but upon actually reading it the first thing one discovers is that there were twelve other co-authors on the paper. The claim that Andy used fake data to create a fraudulent paper is absurd when you realize that among his co-authors were top scientists in their fields who were responsible for performing the tests, outputting the data, and ultimately verifying that it was correctly represented in the paper before signing their names to it. If there was fraud all thirteen authors were implicated. So why is Andy the only one of the 13 co-authors currently barred from practicing medicine in the U.K.? Maybe because he was the only doctor brave enough to ignore pressure from the vaccine manufacturers and the U.K. Ministry of Health to begin larger, more in depth studies investigating the hypothesis that the MMR was causing autism in our children; studies that he never got to finish.

There is also the assertion that the Lancet study had been paid for by a biased outside source, which is easily refuted by following the paper trail that shows all financial contributions for the study were accepted by the Royal Free Hospital after the study had been completed.

Lastly the most disturbing accusation for me was the claim that Andy performed unnecessary procedures on innocent (mentally disabled) children. That sounds horrible until you discover that the parents had entered their children into the study because they were suffering from agonizing gastrointestinal pain and bowel issues in addition to their autism. The “unnecessary procedures” refers to the colonoscopies and intestinal biopsies that were performed by Andy’s colleagues. I don’t know how a gastroenterologist is supposed to investigate possible intestinal disease without performing these standard tests, but then again, I am not a doctor. And neither is the journalist who concocted this unfortunate obstruction of medical inquiry.

History has shown us time and time again that people like Galileo, who break from the scientific consensus to reveal discoveries like “the earth is not the center of the universe,” are often persecuted. I suppose it’s one of our great human flaws. Both of these men were essentially tried for heresy. The difference is that the imprisonment of Galileo just meant there would be a delay in the advancement of modern astronomy and physics. In Andy’s case we may be responsible for a civilization-ending epidemic of autism that has skyrocketed from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 45 children in less than forty years and is on a crash course for 1 in 2 by 2032. And still the CDC attempts to set our minds at ease with their official statement “we do not know what’s causing autism.”

In the Unites States of America we can never allow ourselves to believe that there is a case so sound that we avoid listening to a new witness or shirk our responsibility to investigate new forensic evidence. In the case of the possible link between vaccines and autism we have a new witness in the courageous CDC whistleblower, Dr. William Thompson, and we have new forensic evidence in the documents and data that he has provided us, much of which he claims was destroyed by the CDC.

Ultimately a documentary is not a court of law. It cannot prosecute a case. As journalists and filmmakers we can only reveal information as it is discovered and ask the questions we believe the citizens of the world should be asking. Much of the mainstream media have come out against this film warning people not to see it because it asks uncomfortable questions about the safety of the MMR vaccine. If we cannot ask important questions about the safety of a vaccine then I fear for more than the health of our children, I fear for the health of our democracy.

We should not allow anyone to dictate what we say, what we do, and what we see. You still have the power to make up your own mind. We have made a very important film. It shines a spotlight on damning evidence that the pharmaceutical industry and the CDC do not want you to see. That is probably because they know if you do see it you will find yourself in the same predicament as me for as Einstein said “Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.”

Sincerely,
Del Bigtree – producer of Vaxxed: From Cover-Up To Catastrophe