Andy Wakefield

I just sort of set the scene.

Back in 2000, I was invited to a meeting with the CDC and the FDA and NIH at Cold Spring Harbor.

And they said, look, Dr. Wakefield, every kid gets the MMR vaccine.

Only some develop autism.

How do you account for that?

Well, that's just medicine.

A lot of people smoke.

Some develop lung cancer.

But I said, one of the variables that we think is important

is age of exposure, the age at which you get the vaccine.

The younger you get it, the greater the risk of autism.

Why?

Because we know with natural measles, age of exposure is an important determinant of outcome.

If you get it under one or you get it later in life, after 50, the outcome is more severe.

Now, people are very familiar with this now.

They know that older people are more susceptible to COVID.

So people are familiar, but they weren't then.

So the CDC said, okay, we'll test that hypothesis.

And they went away and they tested it.

And for 14 years after they published a negative paper saying there was no association, we all lived in ignorance.