It’s bracing but perhaps not surprising to see that Donald Trump was fanning the false link between vaccination and autism back in 2014.
Saint Louis University Assistant Professor of Law Ana Santos Rutschman has reported on an increase in anti-vaxxer misinformation from 2014, with some of that rise traced back to automated messaging, or bots, generated from Russia.
In Australia, Christine Baynes, who is part of a loose alliance of “active skeptics” with an interest in the anti-vax movement, told Inq that 2015 marked the time when anti-vaxxer messaging which had been prevalent for well over a decade became fused with an overarching anti-science and anti-government narrative, eventually linking up with the 5G conspiracy theory which ties the 5G network to the spread of coronavirus and holds that Bill Gates is behind a plan to control the world through vaccination.
Yet despite an explosion in misinformation — in some cases led by high profile social media entrepreneurs — Inq’s investigation shows Australian regulators have failed to stop false medical claims which have a direct impact on public health.
“The remnants of the Occupy movement in Australia met up with the conspiratorial fringe of the anti-vax movement and changed the landscape significantly,” Baynes explained. “It was quite a shift.”
The Australian offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement had attracted a cross-section of established political campaigners, anarchists, Marxists and libertarian economists, united around a core message that the system was broken and the rules were rigged.
According to Baynes, the catalyst for the coming together of the groups was the federal government’s “no jab, no pay” social security legislation — interpreted by the groups as state overreach in the decisions of private citizens.
“What I call the ‘irrational anti-science’ of the anti-vaccination movement became stupid and extreme,” Baynes said.
The fused movement grew bigger and meaner. It came to stand for freedom in the face of a government apparently controlled by unseen forces. The newly powerful conspiracy movement was carried along by the old anti-vaxxer call to “trust your own research” — a call to rise up against the tyranny of the expert.
Inq’s investigation reveals that whatever the ideological motives of some, others have made good money from the misinformation and conspiracy business.
Internationally, British doctor Andrew Wakefield remains the most prominent anti-vaccination activist, more than 20 years after his flawed study linking the MMR vaccine to autism was published — and later withdrawn — by medical journal The Lancet. British journalist Brian Deer disclosed that Wakefield had been paid over £435,000 through a company owned by his wife as an expert witness in lawsuits alleging vaccine-linked autism.
“Unlike expert witnesses, who give professional advice and opinions,” Deer reported, “Wakefield had negotiated an unprecedented contract with [a British solicitor] to conduct clinical and scientific research. The goal was to find evidence of what the two men claimed to be a ‘new syndrome’, intended to be the centrepiece of (later failed) litigation on behalf of an eventual 1600 British families.”
Wakefield was separately paid £55,000 start-up funding for hospital-based research.
As serious questions were raised about his research Wakefield left the UK for the United States, where he has joined forces with the wealthy anti-vaccination proponent Robert F Kennedy Jr, son of Robert Kennedy and nephew of president John F Kennedy.
Kennedy junior was last year revealed to have paid — along with “healthy lifestyle” advocate Larry Cook — for more than half the anti-vaccination advertisements appearing on Facebook, which itself has profited from the anti-vaxxer/5G conspiracy industry by way of paid ads.
Since 2018 Wakefield has been in a romantic relationship with Australian one-time supermodel Elle Macpherson, co-founder of natural health business WelleCo, a major player in the international wellness industry. Inq has asked McPherson, through her company, if she endorses Wakefield’s anti-vaccination position. We have received no reply, though the wellness and natural remedies industry clearly profits from the anti-vax movement.
Corporately, America’s biggest business Amazon has been selling anti-vaccination books and videos and only reined in its sales after a feature in Wired magazine exposed that it was selling “autism cure” books that suggest children drink toxic, bleach-like substances.
The doTerra company, based in Utah, sells essential oils using a multi-level marketing model, akin to pyramid selling. The privately-owned company is one of the biggest in the multi-billion essential oils sector. There is evidence that doTerra distributors have used an anti-vax message to sell products and develop distribution chains.
A New Yorker feature reported on one doTerra representative who held an “essential oils 101 class” at a barbecue restaurant in Waco, Texas. There she told her audience that her interest in oils was due to her three-year-old son showing “symptoms of autism after receiving the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine”. Another doTerra representative begins his anti-vax spiel with the words, “I already know I’m going to catch criticism because I’m not a doctor or qualified in any type of medicine study”.
Here an American woman called Season Johnson, an “independent wellness advocate”, markets doTerra oils to help “detoxify” from a vaccination.
In 2014 the US Federal Drug Administration sent doTerrra an official warning for allowing its distributors to market its products as possible cures for cancer, Ebola and autism. DoTerra Australia failed to respond to Inq’s questions on whether or not the company warned its distributors against making false claims linking vaccination and autism.
In Australia the conspiracy economy’s most prominent figure is television celebrity Pete Evans. While Evans says he is not an anti-vaxxer, his claims have now veered into the lurid territory populated by 5G and QAnon conspiracy theorists.
Evans allegedly spruiked the benefits of a $15,000 device, the “BioCharger”, during a Facebook live stream in April to his more than 1.4 million followers, claiming that it could be used in relation to “Wuhan coronavirus”. The Therapeutic Goods Administration found Evans’ claims had “no apparent foundation”, issued two infringement notices and fined Evans $25,200. Evans has denied the claims.
Samoan-Australian influencer Taylor Winterstein, whose husband Frank is a former NRL star, has built a brand called “Tay’s Way Movement” based on her rejection of the science of vaccination, which she has linked with Bill Gates and his supposed role in the spread of COVID-19.
“In order to understand the corruption, conflicts of interest and collateral damage that comes with the 2020 coronavirus PLANdemic… we have to start with BILL GATES,” she wrote on Instagram in April.
Winterstein is selling $200 tickets for her 2020 Australian tour. Alternatively you can pay $1499 (with a payment plan available) to attend an “8 WEEK ONLINE PROGRAM that will break mainstream consciousness!!!” for people who are “ready to say goodbye to a fear-mongering, disempowering system and hello to freedom, to liberation”.
Joining Winterstein in the online program is a collection of anti-vaccination figures including a chiropractor, a nutritionist, a naturopath and a midwife.
Another entrepreneur, Therese Kerr, mother of supermodel Miranda Kerr, presents “research” questioning MMR, polio and HPV/cervical cancer vaccination, side by side with a link to a “wellness shop” selling everything from detox programs to linen to organic wine.
And underpinning it all are the chiropractors, some of whom profit on a business model which relies on rejecting mainstream medicine and embracing anti-vaccination as a symbol of alternative therapy and way of life. It was, after all, two chiropractors who formed Australia’s longest running anti-vaccination group, the Australian Vaccination-risks Network, in the early 1990s and which still has a solid foothold in mainstream rejectionist communities in northern NSW.
David,
It is not the place of government to quash FreeSpeech.
Whilst we can agree that some of the information being presented is disinformation, So are many of the claims of the medical industry.
It is perhaps fair to say that we have come to a place Now where we must say of the medical community and government recommendations, buyer beware.
Their claims and recommendation should be taken as suggestion/advice but not as absolutes. They certainly shouldn’t be able to shut down FreeSpeech.
All the movements that you mention, apart from the occupy movement, which has been a rational protest against inequality, are characterised by breathtaking stupidity. It takes breathtaking stupidity to believe that vaccines, which leave a person with antibodies to a disease, just as catching and having the disease does, could cause autism. Autism has been around before vaccines. Only viruses that cause genetic changes That could be passed on to offspring could ever cause autism but it will be only the disease, not the antibodies that diseases and vaccines cause, which could cause autism. Only vaccines that give recipients mild versions of the disease could ever cause what the disease causes. If 5G towers cause Covid19 then so will 4G towers. People who think that Chinese people carry the disease just because the at Chinese are incredibly stupid. Only a small fraction of the Chinese population in China had Covid-19 and anyone should therefore know that you don’t have the disease just because you are Chinese. That human beings can be so stupid is more worrying than any of the conspiracies that their stupidity allows them to believe.
Only anarcho-capitalists could be stupid enough to believe that Bill Gates could control the world and stupid enough to think that disease antibodies are a vehicle through which such control could occur. I cannot see that the remnants of the Australian occupy movement must have the required level of stupidity.
@Hunt,Ian…Well said…the full fridge brigade, with nothing to eat except their worried wellness entrails, are simply mindboggling ..I don’t think stupidity quite encapsulates the extraordinary deliberative ignorance .
I can’t believe this. I posit that if you reversed almost, I said almost, everything in this article you would be 80% closer to the truth.
The only mistake Wakefield made was to play the same game big pharma has played for nearly 50 years. They caught him out on the same technicality that they themselves perfected. The ensuing aftermath was the massive discredit to his indisputable research. The pressure applied to his 7 or 8 colleagues who deserted him, by big pharma, is legendary almost to the point of a gun.
I could put up a 100 links by the most qualified and trusted scientific “real” experts on disease causation attributed to vaccines but it would n’t get passed the mod, especially when the good journalist has been told to write to a specific agenda. Dismal
O………kay………suggest you might need those two aspros yourself now, Tabs :-).
Great, clinical piece, DH. Good to draw out a very clear eyeball of just what science is up against, too.
Not just two, Jack. More like the whole packet. It’s not as bad as it seems though. I tracked her down and explained to her how I mistakenly believed it was a ” colleague” of mine up to his old tricks. We had a couple of belly-laughs together and she fully understood as we left each other on great terms. Big lesson for me though.
Gotta say Crikey I am a little dumbounded at your angle on this article. “the wellness and natural remedies industry clearly profits from the anti-vax movement.” Ummm what the hell do you think the pharma companies do (who in turn donate to the govt and the media)? Donate their poison out of the goodness of their own heart? Do you have any idea how many billions of dollars are made by vaccine companies each year? Yesterday you published an article stating that “Australia doesn’t have an independent research integrity office to investigate claims of academic misconduct. Instead institutions rely on the Australian code for the responsible conduct of research, although changes to the code in 2018 have made it easier for them to cover up bad science.” and here you are claiming that anti-vaxxers spout lies and have no basis to their argument.
Further to your argument that we should just beieve the science:
“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as editor of The New England Journal of Medicine” (1).
More recently, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, wrote that “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness” (2).
Source: Skeptical of medical science? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4572812/…
How the Corruption of Science Leads to the Collapse of Modern Civilization
Source: https://prn.fm/corruption-science-leads-collapse-modern-civilization/
This Is The Sickening Amount Pharmaceutical Companies Pay Top Journal Editors
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/how-much-top-journal-editors-get-paid-by-big-pharma-corrupt
Death by Medicine http://www.relfe.com/wp/politics/health-statistics-doctors-kill-1000000-people-each-year-in-the-u-s-alone/
The Corruption of Evidence Based Medicine — Killing for Profit
Source: https://medium.com/@drjasonfung/the-corruption-of-evidence-based-medicine-killing-for-profit-41f2812b8704
Payments by US pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to US medical journal editors: retrospective observational study
Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j4619
The Rockefeller-Carnegie Big Pharma Scam
Source: http://www.blissfulvisions.com/articles/Rockefeller-Carnegie-Big-Pharma-Scam.html
Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf
I’m not sure how you did your research for this article but there are numerous studies, well cited books, references and anecdotal evidence from parents who have watched their children change after MMR that prove vaccines are not safe and are not properly safety tested in addition to all the “bad science”.
This article makes you sound like a big pharma shill.
The argument that some of the humans involved in the great endeavour that is the scientific understanding of the world around us are flawed is not much of an argument. Of course there are some. They are people. The argument that business makes lots of money through corrupt practices is not terribly surprising either. To go from that straight to un-reason and superstition is a shame, in my opinion. Crikey is right to call it out.
It is a position in league with the nihilists of the wrecking crew right, who seem to think that the enlightenment was a bad idea.
Science brought us bleeding for fevers, it brought us all asbestos, DDT, the organophosphates, CFC’s, PFAS and PFOA thanks to teflon. Be a bit more sceptical
It also brought us the end of bleeding, the end of asbestos, etc etc. It’s a continuous process. Theories hold until disproven. Science is about what works. Superstition is not part of the scheme.
Science brought you all the technology that enabled you to post your comment Maz, be a bit more consistent and post all future comments on paperbark,using a charcoal pen , delivered via carrier pigeon.
Bill Gates wants you to use the internet, perhaps you should refrain.
Hear! Hear! Sassy G. But surely it is what one comes to expect from ABC people and Crikey should know that?
There are a number of terrible diseases that have been stopped or reduced through immunisation. Diphtheria , whooping cough, tetanus, polio, malaria and a number of other nasties have reacted positively to immunisation. Big Pharma has many problems granted, but it is down right dangerous to not immunise children.
Do elderly people being immunised against influenza suddenly become autistic?
This is all BS!! Every single “terrible disease” humans have known were on the decline BEFORE vaccinations were introduced. The diseases declined in line with the increase in sanitisation. That’s why plumbers earn so much cause you know…we get sick when we drink our own shit!!! Polio was caused by DDT. Do some research rather than listen to an echo chamber. People can’t keep using this “vaccinations eradicated disease” line. It is a LIE. Please read the book “What Really Makes You Ill” by Dawn Lester. Here is a good summary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9g0JKZusfI&
Vaccines were introduced based on the dodgy science behind germ theory. Suggest you look into germ theory vs terrain theory and the whole myth of infectious diseases. Louis Pasteur’s germ theory was seen as a way of making profits and that is how today’s allopathic medical model was created and no one ever questioned it because big pharma now owns everything…our governments…our media and our medical system. Anyone who questions it is labelled a conspiracy theorist and discredited. Another good book is “Virus Mania – How the Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense” and also Rockefeller Medicine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6J_7PvWoMw
And no elderly people don’t suddenly become autistic they just die of respiratory conditions that the flu vaccine brings on…then they are labelled covid because the RT-PCR test also picks up false positives for those who have had the flu vax. Everyone has a different immune response when a foreign matter is injected into their blood stream with toxic adjuvants. Some are ok…some are not. What is in the MMR is vastly different to what is in the flu vax so at least compare apples with apples if you are going to make such a ludicrous statement.
Increased Risk of Noninfluenza Respiratory Virus Infections Associated with Receipt of Inactivated Influenza Vaccine
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/54/12/1778/455098
Influenza vaccination and respiratory virus interference among Department of Defense personnel during the 2017-2018 influenza season.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X19313647
I have countless others but something tells me you don’t want to know the truth.
^ hey look, I found the anti vax nutter.
Yawn! It’s much easier to discredit than actually question anything you are told. It’s actually embarassing people still resort to this type of response. I’m confident we are moving towards a time when those who DON’T question what they are being injected with will be called the nutters!!!
Anti vax nutter confirmed.
P.S. Western science has become much about profit and fame.
It was always very political.
Believing science is much harder than believing theology. On the upside, though, science revels in published contradiction so you get to make your mind up.
The Economist has rewardingly covered the issue of wrong research for at least a decade. That’s what you get for your $.
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2014/03/15/metaphysicians
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/10/21/how-science-goes-wrong
However, it needs to be said that anti-vaxx is faith not science, and is as easy to verify as the arguments in consubstantiation vs transubstantiation.