Vaxxed gets Axxed: Tough-Guy De Niro Caves on Controversial Vaccine Film

When it comes to making a stand for a controversial documentary on vaccines, it seems that actor/director Robert De Niro is not nearly as tough as some of his onscreen characters.

Last week, the film luminary, who made his cinematic bones with heavy-hitting roles in Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Raging Bull, was all-in for including Vaxxed logothe new film, Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, at the highly visible Tribeca Film Festival beginning next month.

De Niro, one of the Festival’s founders, and an influential figure in the movie world, stopped short of personally endorsing the film, which alleges to tell the complete story of the CDC’s “elimination” of data implicating the MMR (mumps, measles, rubella) vaccine as a trigger for autism. But up until last Friday, he was strongly supportive of the screening.

While emphasizing that he is not “anti-vaccination” in principle, De Niro said he believes, “it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined.” The actor, who has a child with autism, admitted that the issue is “very personal to me and my family, and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening Vaxxed.”

Sudden Reversal

Then, in a startling reversal, De Niro announced on Monday that the festival is nixing the movie, citing “concerns with certain things in this film.” After reviewing Vaxxed with “festival organizers and scientists” De Niro now says he has come to the conclusion that, “We do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”

robert de niro 435Neither the Festival nor De Niro have issued any further statements on the rationale for changing course.

The movie–which we have not yet seen here at Holistic Primary Care–is directed by and prominently features Andrew Wakefield, a British physician who made headlines nearly 2 decades ago with a paper published in the Lancet, suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and developmental disabilities in exposed children. Lancet retracted the paper in 2010 after a decade of controversy, and after several other large studies dismissed the vaccine-autism link.

Wakefield, based at the Royal Free Medical School in London at the time, turned out to be on the payroll of an attorney forwarding a lawsuit against vaccine makers. Accused of scientific misconduct, Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine and essentially banished from the medical community.

He has since become an outspoken critic of the vaccine industry and of mainstream medicine. To some, he is a hero challenging a corrupt and deceptive healthcare establishment. To others he is a traitor and the epitome of a pseudoscientist.

The film also includes recordings of phone calls between Brian Hooker, a  biochemical engineer and outspoken vaccine critic, and Dr. William Thompson, a CDC scientist who contends that CDC researchers manipulated and omitted crucial data from a report disproving the MMR-autism link.

Announcements that Vaxxed was to be feautured at the Tribeca festival met with outcry from a number of physicians, public health advocates, and pro-vaccine pundits who voiced concern that by spotlighting a film (and a filmmaker) they consider fraudulent, the festival was promoting an “anti-vax” agenda, and that the star power associated with the festival would encourage more people to choose not to vaccinate their kids.

Some mainstream media outlets took the angle that TFF was being hijacked by “crackpots” and irrational, anti-science lunatics.

Sensible or Censorship?

Vaccine critics, of course applauded the film’s initial inclusion, and view the TFF’s subsequent reversal as yet more evidence of a cover-up, and of the far-reaching censorial fingers of Big Pharma.

Some of the harshest criticism of Vaxxed came from documentarian Penny Lane, whose own recent film Nuts! focused on Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, a depression era country doctor who became famous for transplanting goat testicles into impotent men. Lane accuses the Vaxxed filmmakers of “knowingly spread(ing) dangerous lies.” She adds that “This film is not some sort of disinterested investigation into the ‘vaccines cause autism’ hoax; this film is ‘directed by the person who perpetuated the hoax.”

Let’s leave aside for a moment the questions of whether it is fair game for a controversial figure to make a documentary about his own controversy, whetherVaxxed has any documentary merit, or whether there really is any reason to suspect that vaccines play a causative role in autism. 

There’s another important question to consider: Is a film festival the appropriate province for scientific debate? And more deeply, what was it specifically that prompted De Niro and company to do a sudden about-face?

If the decisive factor was truly lack of merit based on legit scientific information presented by credible scientists to the festival’s board, why won’t De Niro or the Festival’s leaders come forward and say so?

So far, statements from the Festival’s leadership have been decidedly vague about the specific factors that led them to drop Vaxxed .  That leaves vaccine critics and autism bloggers to speculate. Among the allegations: someone from Big Pharma threatened a lawsuit or something worse; Festival board members with deep ties to pharma and biotech companies “suggested” that the film be axed.

No doubt, this story will continue to develop in the weeks leading up to the Festival. We hope the Festival organizers will be more forthcoming with information about why they cut the film, and also that the film will ultimately be released so that we may all judge it–and its arguments–on their own merits or lack thereof.

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