Shares

I almost didn’t write about today’s topic because, like many Twitter kerfuffles, it’s something that happened one day and was seemingly resolved two days later. Indeed, if I had written about it Friday night or Saturday, I would have had to make major changes to the text. On the other hand, it’s a story that allows me to discuss a group that I’ve been meaning to discuss for a long time, namely an antivaccine group called Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC). It also allows me to discuss, at least as much as I can based on what I know, a bit about the saga of Prof. Peter Gøtzsche, former director of the Nordic Cochrane Collaborative and someone who’s known for being quite outspoken. He’s also someone who’s flirted with some rather dubious ideas, up to and including antivaccine ideas about the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine and, as I discovered, someone whose admirers, through their behavior, sometimes exude a somewhat cult-like air.

Here’s how it began on Friday:

As you might expect, a Twitter storm erupted over this. Note the list of other speakers, a veritable rogues’ gallery of antivaccine “luminaries”, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Mary Holland, and Toni Bark (more on each of them later). Note that the organizer of the workshop is Physicians for Informed Consent, an antivaccine group of physicians that specializes in discouraging vaccination under the guise of promoting “informed consent”. It is, of course, in actuality misinformed consent that PIC promotes, as I will discuss. Unfortunately, however, PIC is influential because it is made up of physicians and medical professionals, much as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is influential even though it is in reality an Ayn Rand-worshiping political group masquerading as a medical professional society. Because I happened to be out sick on Friday (don’t ask), I myself had time to contribute a rather long thread about why it would be a horrible idea for Prof. Gøtzsche to speak at this conference:

Ultimately, on Sunday morning, Prof. Gøtzsche Tweeted that he was not going to be speaking at the conference:

Notice the rather strange phrasing of the last sentence. I’ll have something to say about that later. Also notice how Prof. Gøtzsche didn’t say that was withdrawing from the conference and make an excuse, such as that he didn’t know the nature of the workshop when he agreed to appear. I found that rather odd as well.

So what happened? How could Prof. Gøtzsche, who by any stretch of the imagination has been a very eminent voice for evidence-based medicine even counting his recent travails, have agreed to speak for an antivaccine group? And, no, I don’t think PIC lied about him being on its lineup for its conference. That would have been stupid and self-destructive in the extreme, as having someone like Prof. Gøtzsche say that PIC lied about his having agreed to speak would have been a public relations disaster even worse than the PR disaster of him pulling out of the conference, particularly given that he was listed as being the keynote speaker.

Let’s look at the conference first. Then we’ll look at Prof. Gøtzsche’s recent history. Finally, I’ll describe why I consider PIC an antivaccine group, although the conference lineup itself is probably reason enough to conclude that PIC is antivaccine.

PIC Workshop and Luncheon 2019

The PIC Workshop and Luncheon is scheduled for March 17, 2019 in Costa Mesa, California, and Peter C. Gøtzsche is the headliner. The title of his talk was to be How Mandatory Vaccination Violates Medical Ethics, which is not an auspicious-sounding title. In fact, it’s a title that antivaxers would love because they frequently make the unfounded claim that “forced” or “mandatory” vaccination is the moral equivalent of what the Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg did. Indeed, some explicitly claim that school vaccine mandates are against the Nuremberg code. It’s a frequent antivaccine talking point. For example, the grand dame of the antivaccine movement herself, Barbara Loe Fisher, the founder of one of the oldest American antivaccine groups, the National Vaccine Information Center, once did a video entitled “From Nuremberg to California: Why Informed Consent Matters in the 21st Century“, a video that I deconstructed elsewhere in my usual inimitable fashion. Let’s just say that her video featured Nazi analogies. Lots of Nazi analogies.

In any event, Prof. Gøtzsche should have known that this is a favorite antivaccine talking point and chosen a less provocative, less antivaccine-sounding title. (If he didn’t, then he was painfully ignorant of antivaccine tactics.) Now, there is nothing wrong with discussing the ethics of vaccine mandates. However, appearing with antivaccine “luminaries” at an antivaccine conference organized by an antivaccine group is not a good look, particularly when the title of your talk echoes a favorite antivaccine talking point.

And who are these antivaccine luminaries? They include:

  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. What is there to say about RFK, Jr. that I haven’t already said many times? I first encountered his antivaccine stylings in 2005, when he wrote “Deadly Immunity”, a joint publication of Salon.com and Rolling Stone, to the eternal shame of both publications. It was basically the recounting of an antivaccine conspiracy theory. Later, I encountered him arguing that if you criticize women who are antivaccine you must hate mothers. More recently, RFK Jr. has teamed up with antivaccine reporter Sharyl Attkisson to promote what I like to call a “new-old conspiracy theory” of the “the CDC knew how bad vaccines are” variety. It’s nonsense, of course, as all of Sharyl Attkisson’s conspiracy theories are, and is rooted in the claims of a useful idiot named Dr. Robert Zimmermann. The title of his talk is “Mandatory Vaccines & Public Health”. Notice how the speakers at his conference fetishize the word “mandatory”.
  • Toni Bark, MD. Dr. Bark is a “holistic” doctor who became a naturopath and also, as many naturopaths do, practices homeopathy. Hilariously, she was a speaker, along with Andrew Wakefield, on the Conspira-Sea Cruise, a cruise for conspiracy theory lovers. She was also a panelist for an antivaccine panel discussion called One Conversation, where she laid down some serious antivaccine misinformation. She’s a member of an embarrassing (to me) group of antivaccine physicians, although given that she’s become a naturopath I have a hard time considering her a physician any more. Unfortunately, Bark’s quackiness has not prevented her from being allowed to testify in vaccine cases, including, alas, one that happened in my neck of the woods a year ago. I was, however, amused at how Bark didn’t exactly cover herself in glory at that trial. No wonder she has her own entry in the Encyclopedia of American Loons. Still, she represents herself as an “expert witness” in “vaccine injury”.
  • Mary Holland. Mary Holland is a lawyer and faculty at, of all places, NYU, and she too has her own entry in the aforementioned Encyclopedia of American Loons. Basically, she tries to use the courts and authoring books to promote the scientifically discredited idea that vaccines cause autism. She also uses her status to find ways to brief congressional aides about the Vaccine Court and let misinformation flow. She’s also not above flouting clinical trial ethics by doing crappy human subjects research without IRB approval.
  • Rick Jaffe. Rick Jaffe is best known as the lawyer of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski, although the two had a falling out over unpaid legal fees. Basically, he’s one of those “health freedom” lawyers who specializes in defending quacks who get in trouble with the FDA or the law. These days, he spends his time railing against efforts to eliminate CME credit for courses in “integrative medicine” quackery and defending the owners of quack stem cell clinics, although in fairness, their quackery seems occasionally to be too much for even him to defend.

So what will the workshop include? Here’s PIC’s own description of it:

The PIC Workshop & Luncheon will include world-renowned speakers and collaborative discussions on medical ethics, public health, mandatory vaccination, medical exemptions, infectious diseases and law. Attendees will experience both an educational and think-tank environment, network with medical experts and top lawyers, and connect with their colleagues. In addition, attendees will participate in workgroup sessions where they will learn best practices in recommending a medical exemption to vaccination that will enable them to protect at-risk children from vaccine injuries.

Topics will include:

  • Mandatory vaccination and medical ethics
  • Practical tools and best practices for protecting at-risk children from vaccine injuries and elevating patient health outcomes
  • Educational materials to help assess the risks of an infectious disease versus the risks of the corresponding vaccine
  • Current and historical infectious disease data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics
  • Existing scientific research on complications that can result from vaccine adverse events and medical circumstances that increase the risk of vaccine side effects
  • The enactment of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986
  • The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the limitations of passive surveillance systems (e.g., as few as 1% of serious side effects from medical products are reported to passive surveillance systems)
  • The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), vaccine adverse events listed on the VICP Table of Injuries, and the compensation of $4 billion for severe vaccine injury cases

I see…much antivaccine material in this. There are a lot of antivaccine tropes in this list, and the NCVIA is a favorite bogeyman of the antivaccine movement. For instance, that bit about the “current and historical infectious disease data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics” strongly suggests to me the “vaccines didn’t save us” gambit.

There are also some other featured speakers/panelists at this antivaccine quackfest. For instance, there’s Greg Glaser, the general counsel for PIC; Jacques Simon, another lawyer; and Brad Hakala, still another lawyer. Let’s take a look at them in turn. For instance, here’s the PIC description of Greg Glaser, and here’s a direct quote from him featured on the PIC website:

Like most Americans, I just assumed vaccines were harmless. After my daughter’s first round of injections, the experience forced me to open my eyes and actually research the matter. I found a suspicious list of vaccine ingredients, and an absolute certainty of widespread, under-reported vaccine injury across our population. Seeing my nephew suffer after the MMR vaccine also prompted me to research holistic ways to detox from vaccine injury.

Yes, Greg Glaser is clearly antivaccine, and he believes that quack “detox” methods can heal “vaccine injury”. But what about Jacques Simon? One thing, he apparently likes to advise doctors on how to write medical exemptions in California:

This legal panel of attorneys will examine SB277, the new California law that mandates all children receive a one-size-fits-all vaccine prescription in order to attend both public and private schools. These experts will discuss best practices for physicians writing medical exemptions, as well as the legal standards for alternative methods in diagnosis and treatment and their application in the vaccine field.

Not surprisingly, there will be similar panel at the 2019 PIC quackfest entitled “Best Practices for Physicians Recommending a Medical Exemption to Vaccination”. Clearly, the idea is to instruct physicians on how to write medical exemptions without being sanctioned by the California Board of Medicine, the way “Dr. Bob” Sears was. In other words, the idea is to continue the gravy train of selling bogus “medical exemptions” to the California school vaccine mandate without getting into legal trouble. And, make no mistake, it is a lucrative business for antivaccine doctors and quacks.

Meanwhile, Brad Hakala is known for filing dubious lawsuits against SB 277, the California law that eliminated nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates.

Yes, this is an antivaccine confab.

Physicians for Informed Consent: Antivaccine to the core

In all the Twitter kerfuffle over Prof. Gøtzsche’s involvement with PIC, whoever runs the PIC Twitter feed was not at all pleased and felt obligated to deny most vociferously that PIC is antivaccine:

In case you missed it:

Is Physicians for Informed Consent an antivaccine organization?

No. We view vaccines as pharmaceutical drugs and/or medicines, and we respect everyone’s right to the informed consent (or informed refusal) of drugs and/or medicines. Therefore, this organization is not ideologically pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, but rather is pro-health, pro-ethics, and pro-informed consent in vaccination (like any other medical procedure).

Of course, what PIC is really for is not informed consent, but rather what I like to refer to as “misinformed consent.” Also, get a load of the groups with which PIC has associated itself in a coalition:

  • Alliance for Natural Health
  • National Vaccine Information Center
  • Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)
  • Oregonians for Medical Freedom
  • IPAK (This is Jeffrey Lyons-Weiler’s group, and he’s antivaccine.)
  • Vermont Coalition for Vaccine Choice
  • Informed Choice WA
  • Immunity Education Group
  • Michigan for Vaccine Choice
  • SANE Vax

And more. All of these are antivaccine groups. It’s not even a close call.

As for PIC itself, it is a radical antivaccine group, as our good friend Skeptical Raptor has pointed out. For instance, look at its “leadership team” and some examples of who’s on it. Besides being loaded with “holistic” quacks, the PIC leadership team includes:

As I said before, if PIC is not antivaccine, as an organization it sure has a strange way of showing it. I mean, look at how it misrepresents the risks of the measles vaccine.

But what about Peter Gøtzsche?

So we’ve established that the conference that Peter Gøtzsche was to headline is an antivaccine conference organized by an antivaccine group featuring some prominent antivaxers. So whatever possessed Gøtzsche to agree to speak at this antivax quackfest? PIC must have viewed it as a major coup to get someone with a reputation like his to speak, even better to speak about how he thinks that vaccine mandates are unethical, a message that antivaxers will eat up. How on earth could one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration and the former director of Cochrane Nordic be so clueless as not to know that PIC is an antivaccine group and RFK Jr. is a leader of the antivaccine movement? Again, I don’t believe the claims of some of Gøtzsche’s followers that he was never going to speak at PIC. A group like PIC wouldn’t advertise the appearance of someone like Peter Gøtzsche if it didn’t have at least an email from him committing to appear.

The problem, I think, is that something’s happened to Peter Gøtzsche over the last few years. Let’s just put it this way. I used to be an admirer. Indeed, over the last few years I’ve tried very hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. However, his rhetoric has been becoming more and more radical, referring to big pharma as organized crime. He’s also been becoming more and more anti-psychiatry, to the point where his rhetoric sometimes sounds uncomfortably like Scientology.

Then there are vaccines. Basically, Gøtzsche and his colleagues at Cochrane Nordic wrote a poorly reasoned critique of a Cochrane meta-analysis of the HPV vaccine criticizing the original Cochrane article for being biased and ignoring evidence. It was widely agreed that Gøtzsche and colleagues (including Tom Jefferson, whom we’ve criticized before) had vastly overplayed its hand and massively overstated problems with the review. The end result of the kerfuffle was that Gøtzsche was removed from the board of directors of the Cochrane Collaboration, with some leaving with him. From my perspective, basically, Gøtzsche has become a bit of a crank on some issues, including psychiatry, the HPV vaccine, and, arguably, mammographic screening.

So why did Gøtzsche do it? There’s no doubt that it’s a good thing that he announced that he won’t be speaking at the PIC antivax quackfest. That would have been a major victory for antivaxers, with Gøtzsche lending his prestige to PIC, exactly what the antivaccine cranks who run the organization wanted.

Here’s what I suspect happened. PIC invited Gøtzsche to give a talk on the ethics of vaccine mandates with an appeal that played to his ego and suspicion of big pharma. Likely Gøtzsche didn’t know the true nature of PIC, and now that he’s learned it he’s backed out, disingenuously representing antivaccine sentiments as being ideologically opposed to vaccination (something almost no antivaxer ever says). Sure, I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. Barring Gøtzsche issuing a more complete explanation than his cryptic Tweet above, we’ll never know. Whatever happened, I hope Gøtzsche has learned a lesson.

As for me, I’m done giving him the benefit of the doubt, as much as I’ve been doing so the last two or three years.

Shares

Author

Posted by David Gorski

Dr. Gorski's full information can be found here, along with information for patients. David H. Gorski, MD, PhD, FACS is a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute specializing in breast cancer surgery, where he also serves as the American College of Surgeons Committee on Cancer Liaison Physician as well as an Associate Professor of Surgery and member of the faculty of the Graduate Program in Cancer Biology at Wayne State University. If you are a potential patient and found this page through a Google search, please check out Dr. Gorski's biographical information, disclaimers regarding his writings, and notice to patients here.

All Posts Website