Big Pharma admits it lied over MMR vaccine

 By Sally Beck

May 30, 2024

THE pharmaceutical giant which threatened to ‘destroy’ doctors expressing concerns about one of its drugs is in court again for allegedly lying about the efficacy of its measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.

Merck ranks third on the list of most-fined drug manufacturers with $10.7bn fines to date, and by 2009, had paid over £2billion compensation to 44,000 US citizens because its arthritis drug Vioxx increased the risk of heart attacks. Now, in a shocking case brought under the False Claims Act, a 200-year-old law introduced to protect the US government from fraud, it admits falsifying data relating to the mumps component of its measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination.

Merck*, which annually sells $100million (£78million) MMR doses in the US, told the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the US public health body who purchase it, and the Food and Drug Administration, (FDA) who licensed it, that it provided children with 95 per cent protection against mumps. That figure could be as low as 50 per cent or even zero.

From 2000, increasing mumps outbreaks amongst the fully vaccinated and boosted prompted the FDA to instruct Merck to prove the 95 per cent protection claim, otherwise they would lose their licence. Merck re-ran the numbers and fell way short. They designed a test to measure effectiveness – Protocol 7 – that included rabbit’s blood in the hope it would falsely enhance the sensitivity of it. They also swapped the wild measles virus for the weakened vaccine strain in the test. Nothing improved the figures enough and they stood to lose millions in revenue. Investigating the alleged fraud, Dr Andy Wakefield said: ‘At that stage they simply decided to cross out the numbers and change them for numbers that gave them the result they wanted.’

Despite overwhelming evidence, first highlighted in 2010 by Merck whistleblowers, virologists Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, last July Judge Chad F Kenney ruled in favour of the drugs giant who claimed that doctoring the data did not matter because the US government knew and continued to buy their MMR jab anyway. The government’s defence was that they had no choice as they had to protect children against measles. Merck hold the US monopoly for MMR, and measles was targeted for global eradication using the vaccine. An appeal is expected to be heard next month.

The convoluted case is the subject of an award-winning feature film Protocol 7, being premiered today. It follows the story of a mother and lawyer, played by Rachel Whittle, who discovers the fraud while trying to find reasons for her adopted son’s autism. Actors Matthew Marsden and Eric Roberts (Julia Roberts’s brother) also star.

It is directed by Andy Wakefield, the much-maligned British doctor struck off after he raised concerns about the MMR vaccine’s links to bowel disease and autism. Dr Wakefield, who has read thousands of pages from court documents relating to the mumps scandal, said: ‘The judge did not rule in favour of Merck on the basis of fraud. Merck have not effectively denied the efficacy problems.

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Sally Beck

Sally Beck is a freelance journalist with 30 years of experience in writing for national newspapers and magazines. She has reported on vaccines since the controversy began with the MMR in 1998.