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© Infinite Unknown
Anti-vaccine film Vaxxed has been pulled from screening by a Queensland council after a hail of criticism from community leaders and medical experts.

After pressure from The Sunday Telegraph, Logan City Council has banned an anti-vaccine group from using a council property for the film's Australian debut.

The 2014 movie — which is directed by disgraced anti-vaccine activist Andrew Wakefield — was controversially pulled from actor Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year.

It alleges a cover-up by the American Centers for Disease Control over supposed links between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

The autism theory — first proposed by Mr Wakefield in a discredited study that saw him struck off as a doctor — has been disproved but has sparked ongoing conspiracy theories and fear among parents around the world.


Comment: Interesting that the author failed to mention that Dr. Wakefield has been cleared of any wrongdoing:
The BMJ, in essence, has been caught pulling off what may be the largest scientific fraud ever perpetrated by any medical journal in the history of the world. It grossly misrepresented the facts in falsely accusing Dr Wakefield of fabricating the clinical trial data that led to his landmark study being published in The Lancet in 1998. The innocence of Dr Wakefield has now been established by these newly-released documents.

The British Medical Journal also failed to disclose that its own finances are largely funded by vaccine manufacturers who fill the journal with paid advertising, and that such financial ties may have influenced the journal's decision to attempt to destroy the reputation of a researcher whose findings threatened the profits of its top sponsors. If you follow the money in this story, in other words, it leads right to the editors of BMJ, whose salaries are effectively financed by vaccine manufacturers. This all-important conflict of interest is almost never discussed in the mainstream media, by the way.

In light of the evidence that has now been made public, clearing Dr Andrew Wakefield of any wrongdoing, Dr Wakefield is publicly demanding that the BMJ issue a full retraction of its Brian Deer article accusing Dr Wakefield of fabricating the data.

De Niro, whose son has autism, reluctantly pulled the film from the Tribeca festival in March after a revolt from other documentary filmmakers, who believed it was not accurate. Vaxxed was subsequently dumped from Victoria's Cliff Film Festival last month.


Comment: SOTT Exclusive: Robert DeNiro on VAXXED, 'There's something there people aren't addressing'


Earlier this week The Australian Vaccination-sceptics Network announced via a newsletter and press releases that the new Australian premier will held in Logan City, Brisbane on December 6 at 'yet to be disclosed venue' to avoid protests against venues.

The Sunday Telegraph discovered the venue was the Logan City Council owned Kingston Butter Factory Art Centre — even though the council has a strong pro-vaccination stance and provides an award-winning free vaccination clinic to residents.

On Friday the Council dumped the film.

"City of Logan Mayor Luke Smith said the film contradicted Council's public health policies and initiatives," a spokeswoman for the council said.

Vaxxed
The Australian premier of the anti-vaccine film was set to be held at Kingston Butter Factory Art Centre in Logan City Council.
Truth Flicks which claims to be "a Brisbane based group designed to bring like minded people together to experience thought provoking films that expose corruption in science health and mass media," regularly uses the venue for its films and has advertised Vaxxed on its website.

Queensland Health Minister Cameron Dick, who also holds the electoral seat covering Logan City slammed film and called for a boycott.

"I am calling on all residents of Logan to boycott the screening of this movie," Mr Dick said.

"The conspiracy theories portrayed in films like this are counter-productive to the many strategies we have in place to promote vaccination and protect children, families, patients, staff and the wider community against vaccine preventable disease."

Jim Chalmers, the federal Labor MP for the seat of Rankin, which takes in most of Logan City, said he was also disappointed the film was planned to show in his seat.

"There's no debate — vaccinations save lives, particularly among children."

"We should be working to make sure immunization rates are as high as possible in our community and events like this only make that more difficult," Mr Chalmers said.

Australian Medical Association President Michael Gannon said the film 'spread silly lies' and posed a risk to community health because 'vaccine hesitant parents may misinterpret it and not vaccinate compromising the protection that comes with herd immunity."

The film centers on Dr William Thompson, one of the authors of the 2004 CDC study.

Dr Thompson claimed the CDC deliberately excluded data which showed a group of African-American children with autism had also had the MMR vaccine.

The film failed to reveal that the children were given the vaccine after they were diagnosed with autism.

vaxxed ban
© Jamie HansonLogan Mayor Luke Smith said the film contradicted Council’s public health policies and initiatives
Dr Paul Offit, Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases Children's Hospital Philadelphia and a vocal critic of the film, told the Sunday Telegraph that the data was excluded for very good reasons: the African-American children, who were under-vaccinated and had autism, were required to get a catch-up vaccination before being admitted to autism programs.

"The diagnosis of autism had caused them to be vaccinated," Dr Offit said.


Comment: Oh Please! Dr. Offit is a cheerleader for vaccines! The status accorded to him by the pharmaceutical and medical fields permits him to influence the opinions and practice of lower rung physicians regarding vaccines. Unfortunately, even doctors will simply believe the "expert" without bothering to go and check their own medical literature, to see if the self-proclaimed expertise has a solid scientific foundation. Research shows that when people listen to the expert, the part of their brains that is capable of independent thought goes to sleep. He is infamous for claiming that children could receive 10,000 vaccines at once!
An example of, let's call it lunacy, from high places in the vaccine industry, Dr. Paul Offit once publicly remarked that children can safely receive 100,000 vaccines at once. He later changed that to 10,000. Unfortunately, this leading pediatrician who holds influential University and Clinical positions has media clout and has been interviewed often.

He has written publications refuting vaccination dangers and condemning those who refuse vaccinations for their children, even to the point of encouraging pediatricians to not provide care for children not vaccinated.

William Thompson refused to appear in the film but the man who illegally taped conversations with him, Brian Hooker, published a reanalysis of the 2004 Thomson paper to include the disputed data and then concluded African-American children were three to four times more likely to have autism. The paper was subsequently retracted due to bad science.

On October 3, 2014, the editor of Translational Neurodegeneration published a retraction after finding the statistical analysis of the data was unsound and the "editors no longer have confidence in the soundness of the findings".

The incidence of autism in African-American children is "in fact lower if anything' Dr Offit said.

Mr Wakefield was deregistered as a result of a paper he wrote in 1998 which falsely claimed eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at a hospital developed autism shortly after the MMR shot.


Comment: An interview with Dr. Andrew Wakefield: Why we need safe vaccines immediately

Mr Wakefield secretly accepted money from the lawyers of the children with autism who were keen to establish a link so they could sue the pharmaceutical company. Evidence was altered and claims autism symptoms came on within days after MMR vaccination had, in all but one case, been reported before vaccination.

Andrew Wakefield had also applied for a patent for his own vaccine to rival the MMR vaccine.