Wakefield Case Study

1. What were the perceived conflicts of interest in Wakefield’s research activities? There were several conflicts of interest during the research, one of the conflicts was the amount of participants that were studied during the research and for a study like this the number of participants should have been larger than that. Another conflict of interest was the way that it was presented to the media which in turn they started to spread the news and people started to panic and stop given the vaccination to their kids. The next thing that was done incorrectly it was that there was money given to Dr. Wakefield by lancet. The book puts it like this “This information prompted a partial retraction of the 1998 paper by the Lancet on grounds of “a
fatal conflict of interest.” In addition, persistent media security of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision not to reveal whether or not his son Leo had received The MMR vaccination kept the story alive in the British press. In 2006 the death of a 13-year old boy who had not received the MMR, the first person in Britain in 14 years to die from the measles, prompted calls for a full investigation from the General Medical Council (GMC).” (Ghillyer, pg. 215-216, 2014) The other thing that it could be considered conflict of interest it was that Wakefield was about to get a vaccine that he wanted to promote and if that would had happen it would had been a profitable transaction for him, also he did not care what was the results he was interested on the money because he even so far and took blood samples from children from other doctors that he knew that they had children and he did not had a permit from the GMC to conduct this kind of test. 2. If Wakefield had disclosed the source of the founding of his study and his interest in the experimental vaccine, would that have added credibility to his campaign against MMR? Why or why not? Wakefield had his research founded by the legal aid group, this means that it would have to give credit to them in his research and he did not wanted to do that, because he wanted to have his experimental vaccine for MMR and also he stood to make plenty of money if he would had the research approved and found to be well founded.
On the other hand, there could also be a good argument on why the research should have been approved, because Wakefield though that the vaccine for MMR was too strong for children at that age, because their immune system was not develop enough to be able to take the amount of medicine that was given to them trough the vaccination, “ “in addition, Wakefield’s support for three separate vaccination, rather than the triple MMR (which he believed could be overloading children’s immune systems), included an experimental product under development by a company in which he had a financial interest” (Ghillyer, pg. 215, 2014). As you can see there could be two different sides of thinking in this case, the one that I think that I would most likely be incline to support would be the one that Wakefield journal should be discredited because I think he was thinking about the amount of money that would make if the new vaccination would had been
approved.

3. Why did Wakefield lose his license to practice medicine? Dr. Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine because the GMC had evidence that there was conflict of interest discovered by the Sunday Times investigation and other concerns: “Wakefield was working at the Royal Free Hospital as a gastroenterologist at the time of studies which, the GMC found, did not give him the ethical approval or medical permission to conduct tests outside of his approval area, including brain scans, spinal taps (lumbar punctures), and colonoscopies.” (Ghillyer, pg.
216, 2014) “While conducting his Follow-up study, Wakefield was found to have acted unprofessionally after taking blood samples from children of fellow medical professionals at his son’s birthday party in return for payments of 5 pounds.” (Ghillyer, pg. 216, 2014) Wakefield lost his license because he could not fallow the rules, I think he was to worry about the money he could make if his new vaccination would go through. The GMC lost lots of money because of the way that media publish the findings of the research, they focused their report on the amount of money that Dr. Wakefield was stand to make out of the new vaccination. This brought bad publicity to GMC and they did not like that, so they launched an extensive investigation of their own and came up with the conclusion that Dr Wakefield was having a problem with conflict of interest.
4. The GMC found that Wakefield brought his profession into disrepute with his conduct. What could he have done differently to share his concerns about
MMR? I think that Wakefield could have discuses his personal believes about the vaccination for MMR that was being given to children at that young age, Wakefield should have also done a better research with more samples than the ones he provided for the journal. I think that if he would have done the research may be the way that he wanted the vaccine to be distributing it would have been better. The reason that Wakefield went on and published the paper it was because he tough that the word of the parents would back him up on his findings and I do not think he tough that it would back fire on him, that is why I think that he should have waited and have a bigger pool of candidates, have a bigger study on how this drugs were affecting the children’s immune system and also investigate on the dosage of the tree different drugs that were given to the children. As the article stated that Wakefield was a gastroenterology doctor and he got his blood samples from children from other doctors he knew and that is unethical. Another think that Wakefield could have done different was just to follow the rules that the GMC had imposed on him, and maybe he would have been allow to further his investigation on the other hand the way he did things it was like he just wanted to get recognize no matter what and that he did not care for the findings but for the kind of money he was going to make, he was not truthful and that cost him his license to practice medicine.

References
Ghillyer, A. W. (2014).Business EthicsNow. New York: McGraw-Hill [978-0-07 802320-0]