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Andrew Wakefield, MB, BS, FRCS, FRCPath - Intestinal Insights and Etiologic Challenges in Autism: Replication and Confirmation

 

Dr. Andy Wakefield, MB BS FRCS FRCPath, is an academic gastroenterologist. He graduated in Medicine from St. Mary’s Hospital, part of the University of London, in 1981, and pursued a career in gastrointestinal surgery with a specific interest in inflammatory bowel disease. He qualified as Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1985, and in 1996 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Traveling Fellowship to study small intestinal transplantation in Toronto, Canada.

Discoveries made during his time in Canada led him to pursue the scientific investigation of inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. In 1998, he and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital reported a novel inflammatory bowel disease in children with developmental disorders such as autism; the condition later became known as autistic enterocolitis. No stranger to controversy, Dr. Wakefield resisted pressure to stop his research on the possible links between childhood immunizations, intestinal inflammation and autism, and left the Royal Free School of Medicine in 2001. He is involved in many scientific collaborations in the U.S and Europe. The main focus of Dr. Wakefield’s research is an investigation of the immunologic, metabolic, and pathologic changes occurring in inflammatory bowel diseases such as autistic enterocolitis, links between intestinal disease and neurologic injury in children, and the potential relationship of these conditions to environmental causes, such as childhood vaccines.

During the course of his work on childhood developmental disorders, Dr. Wakefield became increasingly convinced of the need for a research-oriented, integrated bio-medical and educational approach to these disorders in order to translate clinical benefits for affected children into measurable developmental progress; this is the driving aim of Thoughtful House. Dr. Wakefield has published 132 original scientific articles, book chapters and invited scientific commentaries and was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists in 2001. He is medical advisor to the United Kingdom charity, Visceral, and sits on the board of the U.S. charity, Medical Interventions for Autism.