Demonstrating Our Support For Dr Andrew Wakefield Outside the GMC

The GMC is a on the third floor of a massive post modern building of glass panels held together with wire ropes. As a building it embodies all the qualities of modern allopathic medicine, being detached, alienating and somehow separate from the dotted, different and very human individuals who pass through its doors. Its one gesture to humanity, is the figure of a nude man who peering in through the glass on the ground floor can see himself looking out from the inside. Why a lone nude man you might well ask?

On Monday the 16th the front of the GMC was trimmed with five thousand carnations, each representing a child with autism from petitioners worldwide, some people had brought balloons and streamers and the multicoloured demonstration held by a number of parents groups, in support of Dr Andrew Wakefield was lively and noisy.

Wakefield, previously a reader at the Royal Free hospital and a man renowned for his ground breaking work on Crohn’s disease, had waited over three years for the disciplinary body of the General Medical Council (GMC), to fix its charges against him. Charges which grew out of the articles written by Brian Deer in The Sunday Times.

Three years is a long time to leave indefinite charges, like storm clouds, over the head of a doctor or any other accused person. A three year wait for justice, did, however, give New Labour the time to establish their multifaceted combined vaccine program while allowing the media to castigate Wakefield in an almost continuous campaign of denigration.

The weather in London was heavy and threatened rain, the air so close it was on occasions difficult to breath. A train derailment held up some of the demonstration's participants.

There is no doubt that organisers of demonstrations probably dream about an integrated and cohesive campaign body putting forward one message. This demonstration was not like that, different groups carried different messages, wore different T-Shirts carrying different slogans. At the end of the day however, these differences made no difference at all, it looked like a real and independent demonstration of support.

Throughout the day, as the news broadcasts sent out the message of the demonstration, the number of cars and commercial vehicles that ‘HONKED’ in response to the demonstration and the presence of parents with vaccine damaged children grew considerably. It was particularly good to see some autistic children, there in support of their own case and their parents.

Although the demonstration was, in the main, a media event which achieved its objectives, all of the participants must have felt pleased that they had given clear support to the three doctors on trial. The media was there, a large number of cameramen and film cameras, together with journalists, at one point appeared to outnumber demonstrators.

When Brian Deer arrived first thing in the morning, few people knew him. He turned up too quickly even for his own camera crew and immediately suggested that he walk back 50 yards and ‘come in’ again. This he did, this time giving the cameras sufficient time to focus.

Fifteen years ago Deer cut a fairly handsome if sombre figure. Now however, his drift towards middle age has left him a slightly bent and balding figure who suppurates cynicism. His appearance, apart from his lack of a cloak, resembled that of a villain in a Victorian melodrama, who is booed and jeered by the audience. He seemed to shrug off this wall of anger as if it came with the territory and was something which he accepted when he signed up as Britain’s number one vaccine defender.

Andy Wakefield arrived with Carmel, his wife, at around eight forty five. Quite contrary to consistent media claims that Wakefield is egocentric and continually seeking the limelight, he appeared, as usual, slightly reticent and almost shy. He held Carmel’s hand as they went through the glass door of the GMC building.

By the time the demonstration wound up at around 6.30, having waited to give Wakefield a rousing ovation as he left the building with Carmel, most people seemed to leave with a sense of a day well spent. Even if the BBC television news led with the headline; ‘Wakefield paid children to give blood for experiments’ while refusing to show even one interview with a parent talking about their respect for this rare doctor, everyone felt that they had done their best to support him and the other two doctors being tried.

We must remember, however, that this will be a long campaign with the hearings lasting up to three months. It is important that we continue to organise not just around the issues of vaccination and autism but more specifically around the hearing itself. The architects of the building containing the GMC did do demonstrators one real favour in providing masses of public space around the building and we should use this space to maximum effect with co-ordinated gatherings and events over the coming months.