Mapping the conspiracy against Wakefield

I've been made aware of the following announcement, distributed via the Autism Action Coalition. I'm providing it here in its entirety, but you can also find the original on their Website. For ease of discussion, I've highlighted in boldface some relevant phrasing.

Support Andrew Wakefield, Mon., May 24, 8 am NYC

Please join Dr. Andrew Wakefield in a show of support on Monday, May 24 at 8 am at 30 Rockefeller Center (30 Rock) in New York, NY in front of the NBC Studios on 49th St. between 5th and 6th Ave. Shortly after 8 am, Wakefield will be interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today show. Immediately following the Lauer interview Wakefield will rejoin our gathering outside the studio, hopefully for further media interviews. Your attendance is requested; please bring signs supporting Dr. Wakefield.

Dr. Wakefield believes the General Medical Council in Britain will issue a decision that morning that will deprive Dr. Wakefield of his ability to practice medicine in the UK. The decision will be the culmination of a four-year show trial in the UK of Wakefield and two of his colleagues, Dr. Simon Murch and Dr. John Walker Smith, who have been prosecuted for trumped up charges to punish them for a 1998 paper that suggested a possible connection between autism, bowel disease and the measles, mumps rubella vaccine.

The significance of their finding has been overshadowed by a concerted systematic effort to discredit the work and the researchers. This effort and an intense desire to subvert the inquiry into the issues of vaccine safety, and legal redress for vaccine damage, has culminated in the longest running and most expensive fitness to practice case ever in the UK, and serves as a totalitarian warning to other researchers who might consider questioning vaccine safety.

It accuses, by implication, all of the following (I've noted the origin of each conspiratorial group in red boldface for easier mapping). This is just the short-list of the vast conspiracy to persecute Dr. Wakefield, those who have colluded in this "totalitarian warning" to "subvert the inquiry" into vaccine safety and to "discredit the work and the researchers," including orchestrating a "show trial" based on "trumped-up" charges.

• The Lancet (the British. Et tu, Brite?)
• 10 of the 13 authors on the 1998 MMR-scare paper in The Lancet (more UK, mostly)
• The CDC (public health folks in the United States. All of 'em).
• The British General Medical Council (Oh, those British. They're really out for Andy)
• The U.S. Vaccine Court (Great. Now three judges, too? United States judges)
• The U.S. Court of Federal Claims (Oh. More United States judges)

All of the authors of the following papers and the associated journals and any peer reviewers (many links courtesy of the Autism Science Foundation) and many more not listed here:

• Neuropsychological performance 10 years after immunization in infancy with thimerosal-containing vaccines. (Italy!)
• Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California's Developmental Services System (California)
• Early Thimerosal Exposure and Neuropsychological Outcomes at 7 to 10 Years (Georgia, these are CDC folk, Massachusetts, California)
• Thimerosal Exposure in Infants and Developmental Disorders: A Prospective Cohort Study in the United Kingdom Does Not Support a Causal Association (UK, again)
• Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence from Danish Population-Based Data (Denmark, natch)
• Lack of Association Between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism with Enteropathy: A Case-Control Study (New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Georgia, and Ireland)
• Measles Vaccination and Antibody Response in Autism Spectrum Disorders (UK, Australia)
• MMR Vaccination and Pervasive Developmental Disorders: A Case-Control Study (UK)
• No Evidence for MMR/ASD Link (UK?)
• Vaccines and autism: evidence does not support a causal association (Georgia)
• A case study of graphical misprepresentation: drawing the wrong conclusions about the MMR virus vaccine (UK)
• MMR vaccine and regression in autism spectrum disorders: negative results presented from Japan (Japan, of course)
• Absence of detectable measles virus genome sequence in the blood of autistic children who have had their MMR vaccination during the routine childhood immunization schedule of UK (UK)
• Autism and thimerosal-containing vaccines: lack of consistent evidence for an association (Washington, Georgia, Denmark, Sweden)

• The American Academy of Pediatrics (U.S. pediatricians)
• The World Health Organization (the World)

This is huge, my friends. Clearly global, encompassing countries from the United States to Denmark to Japan to Australia and pretty much any organization, national or global, interested in public health.

What self-respecting scientist would allow this kind of histrionic verbiage to be disseminated on his behalf? Oh, perhaps one who would tweet the following to his followers. Clearly, he's here to help them...help him.

Andy Wakefield (@DrWakefield)
5/20/10 14:24
@TannersDad Would you help spreading the word? Buy my book from (link removed) on 25th to get free bonus and help it become bestseller

Please. Do what you can to help. Because first, you get that free bonus, and second, you'll counter that totalitarian warning that all of the conspirators above have sent via a show trial with trumped-up charges to punish Dr. Wakefield via a concerted and systematic effort. One thing that I just can't figure out: How do they all keep in touch to keep the conspiracy rolling? Do they have a Yahoo group, or what?

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Brian Deer writes, anticipating tomorrow's ruling from the GMC that will revoke Wakefield's credentials to practice medicine in the UK. A parent whose child was one of the dozen in the retracted Lancet study has written to Deer: "'Please let me know if Andrew W has his doctor’s licence revoked,' emailed the father of Child 11. 'His misrepresentation of my son in his research paper is inexcusable. His motives for this, I may never know.'”