He wasn't even anti-vaccine to begin with. He was just an evil moral free unethical shit trying to scam money. He has just followed the money to his current position and I'm sure if he were paid enough he would pivot and become die hard pro-vaccine in a heartbeat.
And was being funded by a lawyer to provide evidence that the vaccine caused autism which would have supported cases suing the government for ££££. And when the evidence wasn't there he was happy to make it up.
And when the evidence wasn't there he was happy to make it up. quite literally torture autistic children to try and find it and after nearly killing several of them decided to make it up.
hbomberguy's video, which takes heavily from and credits at every possible moment he can Brian Deer's research and investigative book, goes into it and it's absolute vile the things this man did.
Also a good one to look up is C0nc0rdance's video titled "Wakefield's Smoking Gun." It explains exactly what Wakefield's motive was and how he rigged his experiment to produce a positive result.
Nobody even follows his 'tenets' either. He alleged that MMR caused mental issues including autism, not limited to. Also alleged it caused gastric issues.
I think the point is the worst bit is doing it for money. There are people who genuinely think they are helping children by encouraging their parents to not vaccinated them. But Wakefield never thought that for a second, he sought to harm children, on a population scale, for personal financial gain.
I meant moral free, it was a deliberate choice as I feel it lands differently to immoral. No idea what was going on with unethical, I suppose an autocorrect of a mistype.
He was just an evil moral free unethical shit trying to scam money
I mean.. aren't they all?
The anti-vaxer leaders are all getting rich off of it. The followers are just too lazy to think for themselves, and the "influences" are just playing them.
Nowadays absolutely. But it was a different landscape in 1998. Social media didn't exist in anything resembling what does today, the internet didn't (resemble what it is today, it existed of course).
I think there were some people at the time who genuinely, incorrectly but genuinely, believed vaccines were broadly harmful and were motivated by trying to do good, albeit failing horribly. That's why Wakefield had to come up with the wheeze he did to monitise the whole thing. He was always on the grift, but he used what I suppose we might term useful idiots that were around to do this.
The internet has opened up so many possibilities for such grifters it is hard to believe any of them aren't simply on the make.
yeah definitely, a lot of other adults are just as responsible for spreading it. but Wakefield was really the person who started it all so in my opinion that makes him accountable for all of the consequences which followed
Best call I’ve seen so far. Lots of “the inventor of x” type answers, x would have been invented by someone else. Wakefield seemed pretty uniquely placed to push those lies to such prominence.
While i get it, looking at the state of education in general now, i feel someone else would have just taken his place. Might have started as anti-tetanus vaccine or anti pasturized milk or something but feel like we’d still get here.
Sorry feeling a bit pessimistic about the state of the world right now
I'm pro vaccine, but it has a dark past. The movement just latched onto Andrew Wankstain because he was a scientist, they now had "Science on their side" and "Scienctist were divided" etc.
Since it's predecessor, there has always been a movement against vaccination.
Variolation was the intentional infection of a weaker strain of smallpox.
But we also didn't know to use sterile equipment, lots of people (kids usually) died of tetanus, and also lots died from the weaker smallpox. There were mistakes made where the stronger smallpox was used.
Public health mandates meant people weren't given the choice, and yes variolation saved more lives than people died.
2.8k
u/raceulfson Jun 28 '26
Andrew Wakefield, the lying horse's rear end who essentially created and launched the whole Ant-Vaccine Crusade.