In the Wake of Wakefield
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2018
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Twenty years ago, in February 1998, one of the most serious public health scandals of the 20th century was born, when researcher, Andrew Wakefield and his co-authors published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. As we know, in the years that followed, Wakefield's paper was completely discredited as "an elaborate fraud" and retracted. Attempts by many other researchers to replicate his "findings" have all failed and investigations unearthed commercial links and conflicts of interests underpinning his original work. Wakefield himself was struck off the medical register.
And yet, the ripples of that episode are still being felt today all over the world as a resurgent anti-vaccine movement continues to drive down inoculation rates, particularly in developed Western societies, where measles rates have rocketed particularly in Europe and the United States.
But the Wakefield scandal hasn't just fostered the current ant-vax movement but has played a key role in helping to undermine trust in a host of scientific disciplines from public health research to climate science and GM technology.
Through the archive, science journalist Adam Rutherford explores the continuing legacy of the anti-vaccine movement on the anniversary of one of its most notorious episodes, and explore its impact on health, on research and on culture both at home and abroad.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:37.0 | Hello, I'm Jane Garvey, and before you settle down with this podcast, |
| 0:41.0 | I want to tell you about another one that you might like. |
| 0:43.6 | It's called fortunately. Myself and Feug Lover, yes well I don't encourage her too much |
| 0:49.1 | but she is on it, we share stories from behind the scenes of broadcasting with our very, very special and informative |
| 0:55.2 | guests. We've had the likes of Tom Kerridge, Claire Balding and Nick Knowles. Fortunately, |
| 1:01.3 | with Fee and Jane. You can find it wherever you found this. |
| 1:05.0 | Hi, I'm Riana Dillon and this is seriously. |
| 1:19.3 | I don't know about you but I am definitely guilty of just parroting a headline |
| 1:25.0 | something I've read on my phone or on someone else's newspaper on the train. I'll repeat it as fact even though I haven't read beyond the byline, |
| 1:29.0 | let alone compared it to other news stories or researched its credibility. Once the stories... it's |
| 1:33.0 | credibility. Once the story is out there, it's very hard to contain. |
| 1:38.0 | Most children in this country get MMR in the second year of life. |
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