VAXXED (Andrew Wakefield). 91 minutes. Opens Friday (July 29). See listing. Rating: NN
Vaxxed: From Cover-Up To Catastrophe is billing itself as “the most controversial film in America.”
You might also call it the most unbalanced. After all, its director, Andrew Wakefield, and its co-writer/producer, Del Bigtree, are two of the film’s main interview subjects.
They’re discussing the theory that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) concealed and destroyed data from a 2004 study showing a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism.
To be clear, they’re not anti-vaccines. Wakefield, a gastroenterologist, was recommending that children be vaccinated for these diseases separately rather than with the combination. Soon after he published an article advocating that in a medical journal, however, the single vaccines became unavailable. His theory about why that happened concerns Big Pharma.
What’s not covered in the film is that Wakefield’s article was subsequently retracted and he was barred from practising medicine in the UK.
A documentary including that information, and one directed by someone with less at stake, would have been more interesting than the talking heads and the recorded voice of Dr. William Thompson, a so-called -whistle-blower at the CDC, that we’re given here.
The film’s strongest, if most manipulative, element comes from the parents of autistic children who talk about their kids pre and post-vaccine.
