"My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.
The Festival doesn't seek to avoid or shy away from controversy. However, we have concerns with certain things in this film that we feel prevent us from presenting it in the Festival program. We have decided to remove it from our schedule."
If most film festivals are okay with spreading the dangerous lies of someone who had his medical license revoked, I would like to know.
Rose EvelethMarch 24, 2016
Kyle Hill, science editor at Nerdist, started tweeting about the film on Wednesday and was still tweeting about the issue up until the time of writing.
Robert De Niro, who cofounded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 and has a child with autism, published a statement on Friday in response to the criticism."[Autism] is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening VAXXED," he said. "I am not personally endorsing the film, nor am I anti-vaccination; I am only providing the opportunity for a conversation around the issue."The Tribeca spokespeople had similar sentiments. "We are a forum, not a judge," they told the LA Times.Additionally the description for the film on Tribeca's page has no disclaimers on how dangerous of an idea anti-vaxxing is."Mr. Wakefield will claim he and he alone knows the answer to autism, that he has been suppressed and harassed by the medical community because of his knowledge," Kyle Hill told me in an email. "But we've looked at his ideas, checked them almost more times than there are words in his study, and found nothing."You can skip the
Kyle HillMarch 24, 2016
The fear that vaccinations could be the direct cause of that autism is why parents avoid getting their kids inoculated, leaving them vulnerable to crippling and deadly diseases. This is all based on Wakefield's original paper, published in The Lancet in 1998, which drew lines between mumps, measles, and rubella vaccinations and incidences of autism in 8 of 12 children he surveyed. Since then, there have been reams of studies, all of which failed to yield any scientific evidence linking autism and vaccination.I am not exaggerating Kyle HillMarch 23, 2016
"Grace and I have a child with autism and we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined. In the 15 years since the Tribeca Film Festival was founded, I have never asked for a film to be screened or gotten involved in the programming. However this is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening VAXXED. I am not personally endorsing the film, nor am I anti-vaccination; I am only providing the opportunity for a conversation around the issue."