Andrew Wakefield Sets Up His Deadly British Anti-Vaccine Campaign in U.S.

May 4, 2020 (EIRNS)—The current pervasive conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 mitigation effort is part of a vast conspiracy by Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the World Health Organization, and the Chinese Communist Party was launched (no surprise) by a former British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, in 1998 with an article published in The Lancet claiming the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused autism in children. He was eventually exposed for falsifying data, getting paid £400,000 by lawyers recruiting mothers of autistic children to sue the producers of the vaccines, and other shady operations. He was barred by the General Medical Council from practicing medicine in the U.K. in 2010.

He had already moved to the U.S., where he set up an anti-vaccine movement, formed several institutions to peddle his deadly lies. He is still active, and at the center of the current conspiracy hysteria which is diverting attention from the urgent need to unite the world against the novel coronavirus, and from the real cause of the pandemic—the takedown of public health by the Wall Street financial vultures who turned healthcare delivery into a source of speculative profits when the medical care was privatized under Richard Nixon and George Shultz.

Readers will recall that a measles outbreak of 654 cases in Brooklyn last year, although it had been entirely eliminated in this country since 2000; it was the largest number of cases in New York City in 30 years; 73% of the cases were among people who had never been vaccinated. Worldwide, there was a huge upsurge in cases to about half a million, with severe epidemics in some countries.

Because measles (rubeola) is so highly contagious, one initial case can spark an outbreak, has happened in New York last year, spreading rapidly among children whose parents have been duped by the anti-vaccine movement into leaving their children without necessary medical protection. The risks from the disease are severe: About 20% of unvaccinated measles cases require hospitalization, and roughly 1 in 20 children contracts pneumonia, which is the most common cause of measles deaths in young children. About 1 in 1,000 children suffer encephalitis, which can lead to convulsions and cause permanent sequelae including deafness and intellectual impairment; 1-3 children in 1,000 die of neurologic complications from measles. Unvaccinated pregnant mothers who contract measles can undergo spontaneous abortion or have a low-birth-weight baby.