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Sunday, December 31, 2006ANDREW WAKEFIELD, the former surgeon whose campaign linking the MMR vaccine with autism caused a collapse in immunisation rates, was paid more than £400,000 by lawyers trying to prove that the vaccine was unsafe. The payments, unearthed by The Sunday Times, were part of £3.4m distributed from the legal aid fund to doctors and scientists who had been recruited to support a now failed lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. ...According to the figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, Wakefield was paid £435,643 in fees, plus £3,910 expenses. Wakefield’s work for the lawyers began two years before he published his now notorious report in The Lancet medical journal in February 1998, proposing a link between the vaccine and autism. ....Those who received money include numerous Wakefield associates, business partners and employees who had acted as experts in the case. Five of his former colleagues at the Royal Free hospital, north London, under whose aegis The Lancet paper was written, received a total of £183,000 in fees, according to the LSC. ....Also among those named as being paid from the legal aid fund was a referee for one of Wakefield’s papers, who was allowed £40,000. A private GP who runs a single vaccines clinic received £6,000, the LSC says. We're used to pharmaceutical companies paying big money to get favorable research results; we're used to lawyers using research results of dubious merit to launch law suits; but this has got to be a first - lawyers paying big bucks to get research of dubious merit to launch lawsuits. posted by Sydney on 12/31/2006 10:37:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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