Distributors of Anti-Vax Film Are Trying to Keep an Autistic Rights Advocate From Criticizing It
LatestThe distributors of the anti-vaccination film Vaxxed have sent a cease-and-desist letter to an Irish advocate for autistic people who’s been speaking out against the movie. According to a letter they sent her, Cinema Libre Studios is trying to prevent Fiona O’Leary from “making any statement to any person” regarding the film.
Vaxxed is the anti-vaccination film made by Andrew Wakefield, the former gastroenterologist who claims the MMR vaccine is linked to autism. The movie was, as you might recall, scheduled to appear at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year and then pulled after an enormous outcry. Since then, though, the film has shown in theaters all over the United States and Canada, to breathless audiences who see Wakefield as a personal savior and believe the government is engaged in a vast coverup of the fictional autism-MMR link.
The filmmakers—Wakefield and a reality TV producer named Del Bigtree—are now launching a tour for the month of August, “to stop in at the home districts where the members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reside,” they say. (The filmmakers say the ultimate goal of the movie is to get a Congressional hearing on vaccine safety. Vaccines are, for the thousandth time, extremely safe. No credible science exists to show they cause autism. Even a study funded by an anti-vaccination group found no link between vaccines and autism.)
The filmmakers are also interested in showing the film in Ireland and the UK, which has alarmed O’Leary. She’s an Irish mother of five, a woman with Aspergers Syndrome and the founder of an organization called Autistic Rights Together, which focuses on self-empowerment for people with autism. For years, she’s objected to unproven treatments for autism, including campaigning for years against Miracle Mineral Supplement, which is, essentially, bleach, and which was promoted for years as a treatment for autism and a host of other ailments that can’t actually be cured by drinking bleach. (The person who created the product, Jim Humble, reportedly claims to be a billion-year-old space god from a distant galaxy, if we need more insight about how credible it is.)