The Claim:
Andrew Wakefield made a new movie based on that claim and the dismissed “whistleblower” lawsuit concerning the mumps vaccine effectiveness.
The Facts:
This new film is based an old, dismissed lawsuits. It was alleged that Merck defrauded the government and misrepresented data to secure contracts for manufacturing the vaccine.
This article, by our friend Dorit Reiss, discusses the dismissal of a 2010 lawsuit against Merck over its mumps vaccine. A lawsuit against Merck alleged fraud after questions about the minimum ‘release potency,’ an analysis of the amount of live virus in the vaccine at the beginning of the vaccine’s shelf life. After protocols changed in 1996-1997, the analysis included the amount of live virus at the end of shelf life.
In the end, the Federal District Court found that even if there were misrepresentations by Merck, they were not material to the government’s decision to contract with Merck for its mumps vaccine, as the government had its own data on the vaccine’s effectiveness and did not rely on the data provided by Merck. The court decided this without ruling on the fraud allegations.