CHD PA, CHD NJ & Andy Wakefield Rally in Support of MERCK Whistleblowers at US Court of Appeals

Supporters gathered from far and wide to show their support for the whistleblowers in the Mumps fraud case against Merck. Andy Wakefield flew into Philadelphia along with the producers of his film Protocol 7 to join members of CHD PA and CHD NJ to raise awareness of this landmark False Claims Act lawsuit.

After the rally, supporters filled the courtroom to standing room-only capacity. The attorney for the appellants in the case, Stephen Krahling et al. v. Merck & Co. Inc., Gordon Schnell, opened his arguments by explaining that the issue in this case was not the safety of the mumps component of the MMR vaccine but the fraudulent manipulation of study data to deliberately alter records to show the effectiveness of the vaccine at a level required by the FDA.

Schnell argued that the original letter from the FDA warning Merck that it would need to prove vaccine efficacy of 96% and listing other requirements that was never met by Merck because of the fraud they committed. Merck argued that the issues presented by the whistleblowers were immaterial because the CDC continued to purchase the product even though they knew it was out of specification.

The case forms the backbone of Andy Wakefield’s new film Protocol 7, which is now in Regal theaters nationwide. Protocol 7 was mentioned in the hearing today several times as a method used to alter blood samples with rabbit’s blood. The discovery that this animal’s blood could neutralize the mumps virus was made by a Merck scientist who led the protocol.

Attorney Jim Moody attended the rally and hearing and came outside to explain what transpired in the courtroom. He gave a positive analysis of Schnell’s arguments and thought that Merck’s delivery was subpar. He predicts an opinion in favor of the appellants but said that although the three judges will make their decision today that we’d need to wait until after August vacations to receive the court’s ruling.

The producers of Protocol 7 brought t-shirts to give to rally supporters that advertised the film and also passed out shirts that simply stated that “Wakefield was Right”. Wakefield continues to be a lighting rod to the Pharma supported media who refer to his retracted paper in the 1990s as proof that his suspicions described in that paper, that parents had reported to him the relationship that the MMR vaccine had caused their child’s gastrointestinal problem which also appears to have a link to these children’s autism conditions. Wakefield never claimed a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and Autism. He was just the first to publish on the MMR-GI-Autism connection hypothesis something that the science of the past two decades has soundly confirmed.  Wakefield was Right!