Discontinued fringe journal is source of claim that "MMR autism" can be reversed

This page is research from an investigation by Brian Deer for the UK's Channel 4 Television and The Sunday Times of London into a campaign linking the MMR children's vaccine with autism. | Go to part I: The Lancet scandal | Go to part II: The Wakefield factor

Among the investigation's findings was that Andrew Wakefield had lodged patent claims for treatments, possibly even "a complete cure", for autism, based on a fringe theory of "transfer factors". In response, Wakefield claimed "an extensive scientific literature". Here is the most impressive example: referenced in the Lancet paper. It's by Wakefield collaborator Hugh Fudenberg, who claimed to Brian Deer that he made autism cures from his own bone marrow, rolled out "like pasta", "three molecules deep", in his kitchen

Hugh Fudenberg has a unique position in the MMR controversy, having claimed in the 1980s that the vaccine was linked with autism. This paper, presented at a symposium on transfer factor in Bologna in June 1995, and published in the fringe journal Biotherapy (now discontinued), asserts that 15 of 40 autistic children developed autism "within a week" of an MMR shot, and goes on to claim that Fudenberg healed children, with a quarter "fully normalised".

One doctor closely involved with this project, who asked not to be named, angrily denied the claims in this paper, insisted that when Fudenberg's activities were discovered parents were advised to remove their children from his influence, and called Fudenberg - named on patent and ethical applications as co-inventor of Wakefield's proposed products - "a complete quack" (an allegation he denies). Nevertheless, Fudenberg pioneered the transfer factor theory, now widely promoted to introduce unproven products to autistic kids' parents.