I have previously written about the budding Wakefield Trump bromance with respect to vaccines. The cunning fraud, Mr. Andrew Wakefield, veritably bragged about his meeting, before the election, with Donald Trump. From what Wakefield passed along (there are no actual transcripts of the meeting), President elect Trump is a supporter of the Wakefield narrative that vaccines cause autism. Of course, we know real science says no.
Wakefield basically endorsed Trump for president with these words:
For me, this is a one issue election. That is the future of this country, invested in its children. And if we have mandatory vaccination, in this country, in this state, as they have in California, it’s all over…so you use your vote extremely carefully.
There is one person, whatever else you may think about him, who has expressed the fact that he knows that vaccines cause autism, that vaccine damage is real, and that this is an issue that will never lead, in his mind, to mandatory vaccination.
He would never allow mandatory vaccination. I had the privilege of meeting with him to discuss this precise issue. He is on our side.
Well, the white supremacists and anti-vaccine cult got their man as President, and I had moved on to worrying about the end of our great nation. And wondering if there’s a way to move to Australia, if they remove all of their spiders and Meryl Dorey.
But there seems to be a post-election blossoming of the Wakefield Trump bromance.
The growing Wakefield Trump bromance
Of course, once Donald Trump was elected, the vaccine deniers jumped on board. In a recent article, Inquistr quoted Jennifer Larson of the Holland Center, an autism treatment facility:
Now that Trump won, we can all feel safe in sharing that Mr. Trump met with autism advocates in August. He gave us 45 minutes and was extremely educated on our issues. Mark stated ‘You can’t make America great with all these sick children and more coming’. Trump shook his head and agreed. He heard my son’s vaccine injury story. Andrew told him about Thompson and gave him Vaxxed. Dr. Gary ended the meeting by saying ‘Donald, you are the only one who can fix this’. He said ‘I will’. We left hopeful. Lots of work left to do.
Ms. Larson was obviously at that meeting between Wakefield and Trump. And she expects that Trump follow through on his promises.
And in a post-election interview with STAT, Wakefield himself said,
For the first time in a long time, I feel very positive about this, because Donald Trump is not beholden to the pharmaceutical industry. He didn’t rely upon [drug makers] to get him elected. And he’s a man who seems to speak his mind and act accordingly. So we shall see.
I’m incapable of expressing my outrage of the cynicism of Wakefield. Just to remind the reader, Wakefield has a long history of trying to swindle the public. Brian Deer investigated and uncovered Wakefield’s deceptive frauds, outlined in BMJ articles here, here, and here. There is no argument whatsoever (at least if you’re the least bit logical) that Wakefield is beholden to his own self-interest. So, there goes my new irony meter.
Moreover, Donald Trump is probably making the Big Pharma Gucci-wearing stiffs in the executive suite really happy. If Trump’s HHS Secretary, Tom Price, and the Republican Party get their way, they will gut Medicare, which has done an amazing job in controlling drug and device prices in the USA. The gold bars will be on trucks to the vaults of Big Pharma.
Another damn irony meter busted.
The upshot
Dr. Paul Offit, frequently attacked by the anti-vaccine nut jobs, tells it like it is regarding the Wakefield Trump bromance:
[The anti-vaccine movement led by Andrew Wakefield] see in Donald Trump a fellow traveler — someone who, like them, is willing to basically ignore scientific studies and say, ‘This is true. Vaccines cause autism because I believe it’s true.’… Even if he doesn’t change federal policy, he still is no doubt strengthening the belief some parents have that vaccines have done harm and therefore they should choose not to vaccinate their children.
In other words, even if Trump does nothing directly to push Wakefield’s disgusting agenda, the vaccine deniers are empowered to put their children at risk of harm from vaccine-preventable diseases. Let that sink in.
There’s a lot of reasons why I am disgusted by the election of Donald Trump. His bromance with Andrew Wakefield is just another reason piled on.
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