Gordon Stewart (epidemiologist)

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Gordon Stewart
MD, FRCP, FRCPath, FFPHM, FRSS
Born
Gordon Thallon Stewart

(1919-02-05)February 5, 1919
Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland
DiedOctober 10, 2016(2016-10-10) (aged 97)
NationalityScottish
EducationUniversity of Glasgow, University of Liverpool
Known forCriticism of the pertussis vaccine
Medical career
ProfessionEpidemiologist
FieldPublic health
InstitutionsUniversity of Glasgow
ResearchEpidemiology

Gordon Thallon Stewart (5 February 1919 – 10 October 2016) was a Scottish epidemiologist and public health physician who served as the Henry Mechan Professor of Public Health at the University of Glasgow from 1972 to 1984.[1][2]

Early life and education

Stewart was born on 5 February 1919 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland.[3] He graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1939 with a BSc degree.[2] He later received an MB, ChB, and MD from the University of Glasgow in 1942, 1942, and 1949, respectively; he also received a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene from the University of Liverpool in 1948.[2]

Career

Stewart served as a surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy from 1943 to 1946.[2] He then held several hospital appointments, including senior registrar and tutor at the Wright-Fleming Institute at St Mary's Hospital, London from 1948 to 1952, where he worked alongside Alexander Fleming.[3] He became professor of pathology and bacteriology at the University of Karachi in 1952.[2] He served as a consultant pathologist to the South West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board of the National Health Service, as well as head of laboratories at the Medical Research Council Laboratories at Carshalton, from 1954 to 1963.[2] He then traveled to the United States, where he served as Professor of Epidemiology and Pathology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill until 1968, and as Watkins Professor of Epidemiology at Tulane University Medical Center until 1972.[2] From 1972 to 1984, he was the Henry Mechan Professor of Public Health at the University of Glasgow.[2]

Roles in government investigations

In 1974, Stewart was part of a government-appointed team tasked with investigating experimental, now-banned whooping cough vaccines given by the British government to orphans and mentally handicapped children.[4] In 1984, he was commissioned to write a report on the whooping cough vaccine by Britain's chief scientific officer, but the report was never made public by the then-British Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke.[5]

Views on vaccines

In the 1970s, Stewart became well-known for his opposition to the pertussis vaccine,[6] which he claimed to have supported until 1974, when he saw many vaccinated children who had still developed pertussis.[7] By the mid-1970s, his criticisms of vaccines had attracted the attention of many parents who felt that their children had been injured by vaccines.[8] With his support, the Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children was formed in 1973.[9][10] In 1977, he published a paper citing the cases of many of these children as proof that the DPT vaccine caused brain damage.[8] In 1978, he claimed at a news conference that "As with many other infectious diseases, there was a great decline in the rate of pertussis mortality before any vaccine was available."[11] He also claimed that it was safer to get pertussis than to receive the vaccine.[9] In 1977, Stewart criticized the British government's Committee on Safety of Medicines for calling for a pertussis vaccination campaign. He argued that "There are no grounds for saying a major epidemic is on the way and I don't agree with the way their figures have been collected." In the next two years, however, over 100,000 children were hospitalized with pertussis, and 600 of them died.[12] In the mid-1980s, Stewart served as the lead witness for the prosecution in the case of Johnnie Kinnear, whose mental development was allegedly stunted due to his receipt of the pertussis vaccine. The case unraveled after contradictions were revealed between Kinnear's parents' testimony and hospital records, and Stewart's role in the pertussis vaccine controversy came to an end as a result.[13]

Public health consequences

Stewart's public criticisms of vaccines contributed to a dramatic decrease in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom, and a resulting increase in cases of pertussis there.[8][10] He later made an appearance in the 1982 WRC-TV news report "Vaccine Roulette", where his work was portrayed favorably.[8] The host of the report, Lea Thompson, introduced Stewart as a member of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, despite the fact that he had never been a member of this group.[12] Thompson also did not mention any of Stewart's previous associations with parents who believed their children had been injured by vaccines, nor did she note that his research had been used by some such parents as evidence in lawsuits.[8]

Views on HIV/AIDS

A former World Health Organization advisor on AIDS, Stewart was described as one of two HIV/AIDS "dissidents to a degree" by the Guardian in 2000 (the other being Andrew Herxheimer).[14] Stewart and Herxheimer both served on Thabo Mbeki's presidential advisory panel on AIDS.[15] In a 1990 Dispatches episode about HIV/AIDS, Stewart claimed that HIV had not spread significantly among heterosexuals in either the United States or Great Britain, dismissing the disease's spread in Africa as "something else". Epidemiologist Roy M. Anderson dismissed this claim, arguing that Stewart "would benefit from becoming aware of the scientific literature".[6] In 1995, he argued against giving azidothymidine to pregnant women who had AIDS, even though it had already been shown to be effective at preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.[12] In 1997, he co-authored an article in Current Medical Research and Opinion along with several HIV/AIDS denialists, including Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos of the Perth Group.[6] In 2000, he told the Guardian: "We have been criminally irresponsible - we have told people they have Aids when they are HIV positive and that's not true. We have told them there is no cure and no vaccine and they are going to die. We have caused endless stress and even suicide. Families have worried about whether their children are going to be infected. That's why it is such a panic disease. The medical establishment has made the panic."[14] With respect to his views on the cause of AIDS, he was an outspoken supporter of Peter Duesberg's belief that it was not HIV, and argued that there was a conspiracy aimed at preventing such views from attracting public attention.[15]

References

  1. ^ "Gordon Thallon Stewart". Herald Scotland. 2016-10-17. Retrieved 2018-04-28.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h "Biography of Gordon Stewart". University of Glasgow. Retrieved 2018-04-28.
  3. ^ a b "Obituary - Gordon Stewart, expert in public health and colleague of Fleming who helped pioneer the use of penicillin". Herald Scotland. 2016-11-14. Retrieved 2018-04-28.
  4. ^ "BBC: U.K. did secret experiments on kids". UPI. 2004-08-30. Retrieved 2018-04-28.
  5. ^ McVeigh, Tracy; Barnett, Antony (2001-07-08). "Did toxic vaccines ruin lives?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-04-28.
  6. ^ a b c Cherry, Michael (April 2000). "Letter fuels South Africa's AIDS furore". Nature. 404 (6781): 911. doi:10.1038/35010218. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 10801091.
  7. ^ Mendelsohn, Robert S. (1987). How to Raise a Healthy Child: In Spite of Your Doctor. Ballantine. p. 242. ISBN 9780345342768.
  8. ^ a b c d e Mnookin, Seth (2012-01-03). The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy. Simon and Schuster. pp. 71–2. ISBN 9781439158654.
  9. ^ a b Millward, Gareth (2017-05-01). "A Disability Act? The Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 and the British Government's Response to the Pertussis Vaccine Scare". Social History of Medicine. 30 (2): 429–447. doi:10.1093/shm/hkv140. ISSN 0951-631X. PMC 5410922. PMID 28473731.
  10. ^ a b Weigmann, Katrin (2017-01-01). "An injection of confidence: Scientists explore new and old methods to counter anti‐vaccine propaganda and overcome vaccine hesitancy so as to increase vaccination rates". EMBO Reports. 18 (1): 21–24. doi:10.15252/embr.201643589. PMC 5210082. PMID 27872204.
  11. ^ Elliott, John (1978-12-01). "Pertussis vaccine issues unsettled". JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. 240 (23): 2519. doi:10.1001/jama.1978.03290230011002. ISSN 0098-7484. PMID 30848.
  12. ^ a b c Offit, Paul A. (2015-03-10). Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. Basic Books. pp. 50–1. ISBN 9780465057962.
  13. ^ Baker, Jeffrey P. (2003-09-08). "The pertussis vaccine controversy in Great Britain, 1974-1986" (PDF). Vaccine. 21 (25–26): 4003–4010. doi:10.1016/S0264-410X(03)00302-5. ISSN 0264-410X. PMID 12922137.
  14. ^ a b "A fight for life". The Guardian. 2000-06-30. Retrieved 2018-04-28.
  15. ^ a b Beresford, David; McKie, Robin (2000-05-06). "Africa's Aids fate hangs in balance". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-04-28.
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