Posted by Autism Reality NB
Dr. Beatrice Golomb’s presentation This Is Your Brain On Politics pulls no punches in its critique of conflicts of interest, bias, censorship and intimidation involving pharmaceutical companies, health authorities and academic institutions and publications. Professor Golomb’s presentation includes commentary on pressure tactics, including intimidation, used by some pharmaceutical industry representatives to silence criticism of their products and the research that accompanies them.
Professor Golomb’s presentation provides an interesting framework with which to consider the continued pressures exerted on Dr. Andrew Wakefield over an article he wrote in 1998 for which, in 2011, he was denounced, by journalistic decree, as being guilty of fraud. A refutation of the Wakefield fraud allegations by research microbiologist David Lewis was published in the BMJ but has not received the major US or world media attention that the original fraud allegations attracted.
An even more recent demonstration of pressure on those who question or study issues pertaining to vaccine safety has arisen in response to an article on vaccine adjuvants published by two UBC Ph.D.’s. In Tom Sandborn’s article in the Vancouver Courier Responses to UBC vaccine paper a problem for free scientific inquiry and expression UBC researchers raise questions, experience backlash Sandborn describes what appears to be an effort to suppress publication of peer reviewed journal articles which raise potential vaccine health issues. None other than Dr. Paul Offit is reported to have weighed in with comments which appear to suggest that studies or articles criticizing vaccine safety in any way should not be published:
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