A public health journal is a scientific journal devoted to the field of public health, including epidemiology, biostatistics, and health care (including medicine, nursing and related fields). Most scientific journals are peer-reviewed. Public health journals are commonly published by health organizations and societies, such as the ''Bulletin of the World Health Organization'' or the ''Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health'' (published by the British Medical Association).

The increase in public health research in recent decades has seen a rapid increase in the number of articles and journals. As such, many public health journals have emerged with a specialized focus, such as in the area of policy (e.g. ''Journal of Public Health Policy''), a specific region or country of the world (e.g. ''Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health'', ''Pan American Journal of Public Health'' or ''Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal''), a specific intervention/practice area (e.g. ''Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention''), or other particular focus (e.g. ''Human Resources for Health'').

Scope

Public health journals often indicate their target audience as being interdisciplinary, including health care professionals, public health decision-makers and researchers. A main objective is to support evidence-based policy and evidence-based practice in public health. In contrast, medical journals (e.g. ''The Lancet'') typically focus on reaching medical professionals as their main audience, although the boundaries between these two categories is increasingly blurry.

It has been argued that some medical and public health journals are "filled with increasingly complex science" which depends upon advanced statistics and research methods that health care providers may have difficulty understanding. In response they have turned towards publishing "articles that are more journalism than science" such as reviews, news, and educational material. However, science is what attracts major attention and leads institutions and libraries to purchase subscriptions.

Review process

For an article to be accepted for publication in a public health or medical journal it must typically undergo a review process. Each journal creates its own process, but they have certain common characteristics in general. There are various general "levels" of scrutiny, which have some effect on the respect given to articles published in the journals. Some broad categories might be ''editorial review'', ''peer review'', and ''blind peer review''. Richard Smith, former editor of the ''British Medical Journal'', stated in 2006 that studies had found peer review to be ineffective and prone to abuse, but noted that editors consider it invaluable.

Editorial review

In this process, articles which meet the minimum requirements for submission (such as including the necessary descriptions of funding, privacy and publication releases, ethics/institutional review board approval, statements of original work, signatures of authors, and so on,) are first looked over by a managing editor or a member of an editorial board. They may be referred back to the authors for revision and resubmission, rejected, or presented to the editorial board for final approval.

Peer review

A more stringent review process includes a full peer review. After first review by a managing editor or member of an editorial board, an article which has good possibilities will be sent out for review by two or more researchers in the specific area. If these reviews are positive the article may be referred back to the authors to address any comments by the reviewers, or (rarely) may be accepted immediately by the editorial board.

Blind review

One common review process is the same as the peer review above, except all references to the authors are removed from the article before review by the researchers.

Content

Most public health journals include various types of content, such as:

Editorial

Letter to the Editor

Original research

Literature review, systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstracts from scientific meetings or other journals

Technical notes

Medical journals may also include, for example, case reports and clinical images of interest. Some online journals are also moving to publishing video content (e.g. ''Journal of Visualized Experiments'').

Internet and open access

By the early 21st century, most public health and medical journals were available online, thus increasing their accessibility worldwide. There is a general move from print as primary medium to electronic publication, an example being the online journals published by BioMed Central.

With the advent of online publication, some health journals are transforming from traditional subscription-based and pay-per-view access to open access for some or all of their content.

Impact factor

Like other scientific journals, many public health journals are ranked with an impact factor, linked to the probability of an article published in that journal being cited. It is currently accepted that a higher impact factor indicates a better journal quality, at least in some health disciplines.

Journals with high impact factors according to the Journal Citation Reports in the category "Public, Environmental and Occupational Health" include: ''Environmental Health Perspectives'', ''American Journal of Epidemiology'', ''Annual Review of Public Health'', ''Genetic Epidemiology'', ''Epidemiologic Reviews'', ''Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention'', ''International Journal of Epidemiology'', ''Epidemiology'', ''Bulletin of the World Health Organization'' and ''American Journal of Public Health''. In addition, given their interdisciplinary nature, some journals with a public health focus may be found in other categories. For example, ''Human Resources for Health'' is placed in the category "industrial relations and labor", where it was ranked 3rd in 2010.

See also

Biomedical research

Health services research

List of medical journals

* BioMed Central series of journals

List of nursing journals

Medical literature

National public health institutes

References

Public health journal

es:Revista médica fr:revue médicale

Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	Andrew Lansley
Honorific-suffix	CBE MP
Office	Secretary of State for Health
Primeminister	David Cameron
Term start	12 May 2010
Predecessor	Andy Burnham
Office2	Shadow Secretary of State for Health
Leader2	Michael HowardDavid Cameron
Term start2	19 June 2004
Term end2	11 May 2010
Predecessor2	Tim Yeo
Successor2	Andy Burnham
Office3	Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office
Term start3	15 June 1999
Term end3	18 September 2001
Leader3	William Hague
Preceded3	New Position
Succeeded3	Tim Collins
Office4	Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire
Term start4	1 May 1997
Predecessor4	Constituency Created
Majority4	7,838 (13.3%)
Birth date	December 11, 1956
Birth place	Hornchurch, Essex, England
Party	Conservative
Alma mater	University of Exeter
Religion	Church of England
Website	andrewlansley.co.uk
Nickname	Angela Lansbury }}

Andrew David Lansley, CBE, MP (born 11 December 1956) is the UK Secretary of State for Health, who has been the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for South Cambridgeshire since the 1997 general election, and was Shadow Secretary of State for Health from June 2004 until becoming Secretary of State for Health in May 2010. Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill 2011, introducing major reforms to the NHS, is one of the most controversial plans of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, resulting in strong opposition from both the Royal College of Nursing and British Medical Association.

Early life

Born in Hornchurch, Essex, Lansley was educated at Brentwood School and the University of Exeter, gaining a BA in politics. His father, Thomas, worked in a pathology laboratory and was co-founder of the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine and chair of the Institute of Medical Laboratory Scientists.

Before entering politics, Lansley had "a promising career in the civil service". Lansley worked for Norman Tebbit for three years as his principal private secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry. This encompassed the period of the IRA's 1984 Brighton hotel bombing at the Conservative Party Conference in which Tebbit was seriously injured. Lansley and others are praised by Tebbit for their support at that time.

Lansley went on to become more fully involved in politics. In 1990 was appointed to run the Conservative Research Department. He ran the Conservative campaign for the 1992 General Election, which he describes as one of "his proudest career achievements" and for which he was awarded a CBE. He suffered a minor stroke in 1992, initially misdiagnosed as an ear infection, but made a full recovery save from permanently losing his sense of "fine balance".

Member of Parliament

Lansley sought to enter parliament and was selected for the South Cambridgeshire seat where he was subsequently elected as an MP in 1997. He immediately joined the House of Commons health select committee.

At the 2001 election he again took on a strategy role as a Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party. As part of his duties Shadow Ministers had to clear the timing of their announcements with Lansley. He fitted them into a timetable known as the 'Stalingrid'. The 2001 election was not a success for the Conservative Party and party leader, William Hague, resigned in its wake. Iain Duncan Smith, the new leader, offered Lansley a position after the election but was turned down and, until Michael Howard became leader, Lansley was a backbencher.

He was appointed as a Privy Counsellor on 13 May 2010.

Shadow Cabinet

After Howard's election as party leader, Lansley soon returned to the Conservative frontbench. He served as the Shadow Secretary of State for Health. In his post he developed policies centred on using choice to improve the National Health Service, and was author of a chapter in ''The Future of the NHS''.

Secretary of State for Health

After becoming Prime Minister in May 2010, David Cameron named Lansley as Health Secretary in the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government.

Proposed reform

In January 2011 Ministers published the Health and Social Care Bill, detailing planned reforms that will pave the way for GP consortia to take over management of the NHS from Primary Care Trusts. Prime minister David Cameron said "fundamental changes" are needed in the NHS. But doctors leaders believe that GPs could simply have taken charge of PCTs instead—and achieved the same results. The reforms will pave the way for groups of GPs to take control of the NHS budget. The consortia will take charge of about 80% of the funding, and will be in charge of planning and buying everything from community health centres to hospital services. However, some specialist services such as neurosurgery will be provided by the national board. The consortia will take charge from 2013, although pilots are beginning to start.

In a letter to ''The Times'', BMA chairman Hamish Meldrum, Royal College of Nursing chief executive Peter Carter and the heads of Unison, Unite and others said the speed and scale of the reforms proposed risked undermining the care of patients by putting cost before quality. Criticism of the reform had been mounting ahead of the publication of the Health and Social Care Bill on 19 January 2011.

Lansley’s white paper on the NHS has led to him being the subject of an unflattering hip hop track and video by rapper NxtGen with the chorus "Andrew Lansley, greedy / Andrew Lansley, tosser / the NHS is not for sale, you grey-haired manky codger," which has now been viewed over 400,000 times on YouTube and which was picked up as one of the theme tunes to the anti cuts movement and spawned several placards at the March for the Alternative in March 2011. The video, partly paid for by Unison features NxtGen rapping about Lansley's proposed GP commissioning policy, his relation to the expenses scandal and the controversial donation he received from private health company Care UK. Lansley has responded with the statement he was "impressed that he's managed to get lyrics about GP commissioning into a rap", but "We will never privatise the NHS".

Following the widespread criticism, on 4 April 2011, the Government announced a "pause" in the progress of the Health and Social Care Bill to allow the government to 'listen, reflect and improve' the proposals.

On 13 April 2011, 96% of 497 delegates at the Royal College of Nursing conference backed a motion of no confidence questioning Andrew Lansley's handling of NHS reforms in England. Later that day, Lansley met with 65 nurses at the same conference, and apologized by saying "I am sorry if what I'm setting out to do hasn't communicated itself."

Controversies

Conflict of interest

While in opposition as health spokesman, Andrew Lansley accepted a donation of £21,000 from John Nash, the chairman of private healthcare provider Care UK and founder of the private equity fund Sovereign Capital, which owns several other private healthcare companies, to help fund his private office, leading to allegations of a conflict of interest. Such companies stand to be the biggest beneficiaries of Conservative policies to increase the use of private health providers within the NHS.

Obesity controversy

Andrew Lansley has also gone on record as saying "people who see more fat people around them may themselves be more likely to gain weight. Young people who think many of their friends binge-drink are likely to do so themselves."

Recession

Andrew Lansley wrote a blog entry on the Conservative Party website on 25 November 2008, which claimed the "good things" from a recession included people being able to spend more time with their families. He was later forced to apologise.

Parliamentary expenses

In the Parliamentary expenses scandal in 2009, Lansley was accused of 'flipping', or redesignating, his second home, after claiming for renovation of a rural cottage prior to selling it. It is claimed that he then 'flipped' his second home designation to a London flat, and claimed thousands of pounds for furniture. Lansley responded to the claims by stating that his claims were "within the rules".

Health policy

Lansley has also courted controversy by putting fast food companies such as McDonald's, KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, said by campaign groups to be the equivalent of handing smoking policy over to the tobacco industry.

Personal life

Lansley's wealth is estimated at £700,000.

In 1997 Lansley left his first wife, Dr Marilyn Biggs, with whom he had three children. He has two children with his second wife Sally Low. He is a member of the Church of England.

Interests

At a business conference Lansley's wife advised attendees to “establish positive relationships with decision-makers". Although staff members of Low Associates, the PR firm she runs, had food and drug companies among their clients before joining Low Associates, the firm denies it has any clients in the health sector.

Food advertisers

Until December 2009, Lansley received £134 an hour from a firm of advertisers that represents clients such as Walkers Crisps, McDonalds, Unilever, Mars and Pizza Hut; ''Private Eye'' suggests a link between these activities and Lansley's desire to see a more lightly regulated food industry. The same publication suggested a similar link to a Department of Health report on Red Meat in which the only products listed in the report found to contain suitable amounts of red meat to merit a "Good" rating were a McDonald's Big Mac, and a Pepperami (manufactured by Unilever).

References

External links

Andrew Lansley CBE MP ''official constituency website''

Profile at the Conservative Party

The Future of the NHS

|- |- |- |- ! colspan="3" style="background:#cfc;" | Order of precedence in Northern Ireland

Category:1956 births Category:Alumni of the University of Exeter Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:English Anglicans Category:Civil servants in the Department of Trade and Industry Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Conservative Party (UK) MPs Category:Living people Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:Old Brentwoods Category:Private secretaries in the British Civil Service Category:People from Hornchurch Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:UK MPs 2010–

de:Andrew Lansley la:Andreas Lansley pl:Andrew Lansley sco:Andrew Lansley simple:Andrew Lansley

Andrew Wakefield (born 1957) is a British former surgeon and medical researcher known for his fraudulent claims of a causative connection between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, autism and autistic enterocolitis. The latter controversial term was created by Wakefield to describe an unproven form of inflammatory bowel disease.

Four years after the publication of the study, the findings of other researchers failed to confirm or reproduce Wakefield's. A 2004 investigation by ''Sunday Times'' reporter Brian Deer identified undisclosed financial conflicts of interest on Wakefield's part, and most of his coauthors then withdrew their support for the study's interpretations. The British General Medical Council (GMC) conducted an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield and two former colleagues. The investigation centred on Deer's numerous findings, including one that autistic children were subjected to unnecessary invasive medical procedures, such as colonoscopy and lumbar puncture, and that Wakefield acted without the required ethical approval from an institutional review board.

On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found some three dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children. The panel ruled that Wakefield had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted both against the interests of his patients, and "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his published research. ''The Lancet'' immediately and fully retracted his 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC’s findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified. Wakefield was struck off the Medical Register in May 2010, and may no longer practise medicine.

In January 2011, an article by Brian Deer and its accompanying editorial in ''BMJ'' identified Wakefield's work as an "elaborate fraud". In a follow-up article, Deer said that Wakefield had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing". However, by that time, Wakefield's study and public recommendations against the use of the combined MMR vaccine were linked to a steep decline in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom and a corresponding rise in measles cases, resulting in serious illness and several fatalities. Wakefield has continued to defend his research and conclusions, saying there was no fraud, hoax or profit motive. The BMJ stands by its story.

Personal life and career

Wakefield was born in 1957; his father was a neurologist and his mother was a general practitioner. After leaving the independent King Edward's School, Bath, Wakefield studied medicine at St Mary's Hospital Medical School (now Imperial College School of Medicine), fully qualifying in 1981. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1985 and continued his studies under a Wellcome Trust travelling fellowship at the University of Toronto (U of T) in Canada, where he studied small intestine transplantation. At U of T from 1986 to 1989, he co-authored a journal study on tissue rejection and transplantion in rats.

Back in the UK, he worked on the liver transplant programme at the Royal Free Hospital in London. In 1995, while conducting research into Crohn's disease, he was approached by Rosemary Kessick, the parent of an autistic child, who was seeking help with her son's bowel problems and autism; Kessick ran a group called Allergy Induced Autism. In 1996, Wakefield turned his attention to researching the connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. At the time of his MMR research study, Wakefield was senior lecturer and honorary consultant in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine (from 2008 UCL Medical School). He resigned in 2001, by "mutual agreement and was made a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists", and moved to the US in 2001 or 2004, both dates according to 'The Times'. One report noted he was asked to leave Royal Free Hospital in 2004 after he did not fulfill a request to duplicate the findings in his controversial ''Lancet'' paper.

Wakefield subsequently helped establish and served as the executive director of Thoughtful House Center for Children, a center for the study of autism in Austin, Texas where, according to ''The Times'' he "continued to promote the theory of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, despite admitting it was 'not proved'." He resigned from Thoughtful House in February 2010, after the British General Medical Council found that he had been "dishonest and irresponsible" in conducting his earlier autism research in England. ''The Times'' reported in May 2010 that he was a medical advisor for Visceral, a UK charity that "researches bowel disease and developmental disorders".

Wakefield is no longer licensed in the UK as a physician, and is not licensed in the US. As of January 2011, he lives in the US where he has a following including celebrities like Jenny McCarthy who wrote the foreword for Wakefield's autobiography, ''Callous Disregard'', and believes her son's autism is due to vaccines. According to Deer, as of 2011, he lives near Austin with his wife, Carmel, and four children.

MMR controversy

On 28 February 1998, a paper written by Wakefield and twelve other authors about twelve autistic children was published in ''The Lancet''. In it, the authors claimed to have identified a new syndrome which they called autistic enterocolitis, raising the possibility of a link between a novel form of bowel disease, autism, and the MMR vaccine. In the study's "findings", the authors noted that the parents of eight of the twelve children linked what were described as "behavioural symptoms" with MMR, and in its "results" reported that the onset of these symptoms began within two weeks of MMR vaccination. In the published ''Lancet'' summary, known as the "interpretation", the authors wrote:

:"We identified associated gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression in a group of previously normal children, which was generally associated in time with possible environmental triggers."

These possible triggers were reported to be MMR in eight cases, and measles infection in one. The paper was instantly controversial, leading to widespread publicity in the UK and the convening of a special panel of the UK's Medical Research Council the following month. One study done based in Japan found that there was no causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism in groups of children given the triple MMR vaccine and children who received individual measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations. The MMR was replaced with individual vaccinations in 1993.

Although the paper said that no causal connection had been proven, and before it was published, Wakefield made statements at a press conference and in a video news release issued by the hospital, calling for suspension of the triple MMR vaccine until more research could be done. The press conference was later criticized as 'science by press conference'. According to BBC News, it was this press conference, rather than the ''Lancet'' paper, that fueled the MMR vaccination scare. According to the BBC, "He told journalists it was a 'moral issue' and he could no longer support the continued use of the three-in-one jab for measles, mumps and rubella. 'Urgent further research is needed to determine whether MMR may give rise to this complication in a small number of people,' Dr Wakefield said at the time." He said, "If you give three viruses together, three live viruses, then you potentially increase the risk of an adverse event occurring, particularly when one of those viruses influences the immune system in the way that measles does." He suggested parents should opt for single jabs against measles, mumps and rubella, separated by gaps of one year.

In December 2001, Wakefield resigned from the Royal Free Hospital, saying, "I have been asked to go because my research results are unpopular." The medical school said that he had left "by mutual agreement." In February 2002, Wakefield stated, "What precipitated this crisis was the removal of the single vaccine, the removal of choice, and that is what has caused the furore – because the doctors, the gurus, are treating the public as though they are some kind of moronic mass who cannot make an informed decision for themselves."

Aftermath of initial controversy

Wakefield continued conducting clinical research in the USA after leaving the Royal Free Hospital in December 2001. He joined a controversial American researcher, Jeffrey Bradstreet, at the International Child Development Resource Center, to conduct further studies on the possible relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In 2004, Wakefield started work at the Thoughtful House research center in Austin, Texas. Wakefield served as Executive Director of Thoughtful House until February 2010, when he resigned in the wake of findings against him by the British General Medical Council.

In February 2004, controversy resurfaced when Wakefield was accused of a conflict of interest. The ''Sunday Times'' reported that some of the parents of the 12 children in the ''Lancet'' study were recruited via a UK lawyer preparing a lawsuit against MMR manufacturers, and that the Royal Free Hospital had received £55,000 from the UK's Legal Aid Board (now the Legal Services Commission) to pay for the research. Previously, in October 2003, the board had cut off public funding for the litigation against MMR manufacturers. Following an investigation of ''The Sunday Times'' allegations by the UK General Medical Council, Wakefield was charged with serious professional misconduct, including dishonesty. In December 2006, the ''Sunday Times'' further reported that in addition to the money they gave the Royal Free Hospital, the lawyers responsible for the MMR lawsuit had paid Wakefield personally more than £400,000, which he had not previously disclosed.

Twenty-four hours before the 2004 ''Sunday Times'' report, ''The Lancet'' responded to the investigation in a public statement, describing Wakefield's research as "fatally flawed". ''The Lancet's'' editor said he believed the paper would have been rejected as biased if the peer reviewers had been aware of Wakefield's conflict of interest. Ten of Wakefield's twelve co-authors of the ''Lancet'' paper later published a retraction of an interpretation: The section of the paper retracted read as follows:

: "Interpretation. We identified associated gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression in a group of previously normal children, which was generally associated in time with possible environmental triggers."

The retraction stated:

: "We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between (the) vaccine and autism, as the data were insufficient. However the possibility of such a link was raised, and consequent events have had major implications for public health. In view of this, we consider now is the appropriate time that we should together formally retract the interpretation placed upon these findings in the paper, according to precedent."

Wakefield v Channel 4 and others

In November 2004, Channel 4 broadcast a one-hour ''Dispatches'' investigation by reporter Brian Deer; the ''Toronto Star'' said Deer had "produced documentary evidence that Wakefield applied for a patent on a single-jab measles vaccine before his campaign against the MMR vaccine, raising questions about his motives".

In addition to Wakefield's unpublished initial patent submission, Deer released a copy of the published patent application. At page 1, the first paragraph of this stated:

: "The present invention relates to a new vaccine/immunisation for the prevention and/or prophylaxis against measles virus infection and to a pharmaceutical or therapeutic composition for the treatment of IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease); particularly Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis and regressive behavioural disease (RBD) (also referred to as "Pervasive Developmental Disorder)."

Before describing the research in Wakefield's 1998 Lancet paper, at the same page this patent explicitly states that the MMR vaccine causes autism:

: "It has now also been shown that use of the MMR vaccine (which is taken to include live attentuated measles vaccine virus, measles virus, mumps vaccine virus and rubella vaccine virus, and wild strains of the aforementioned viruses) results in ileal lymphoid nodular hyperplasia, chronic colitis and pervasive developmental disorder including autism (RBD), in some infants."

According to Deer, a letter from Wakefield's lawyers to him dated 31 Jan 2005 said: "Dr Wakefield did not plan a rival vaccine."

In the Dispatches programme, Deer also revealed that Nicholas Chadwick, a researcher working under Wakefield's supervision in the Royal Free medical school, had failed to find measles virus in the children reported on in the Lancet.

In January 2005, Wakefield initiated libel proceedings against Channel 4, the independent production company Twenty Twenty and Brian Deer. At the same time, Wakefield issued libel proceedings against ''The Sunday Times'', and against Deer personally over his website briandeer.com. Within weeks of issuing his claims, however, Wakefield sought to have the action frozen until after the conclusion of General Medical Council proceedings against him. Fighting back, Channel 4 and Deer obtained a High Court order compelling Wakefield to continue with his action, or discontinue it. After a hearing in court, Mr Justice David Eady ruled against Wakefield, accusing him of using legal moves "as a weapon in his attempts to close down discussion and debate over an important public issue," and stating:

:"I am quite satisfied, therefore, that the Claimant wished to extract whatever advantage he could from the existence of the proceedings while not wishing to progress them or to give the Defendants an opportunity of meeting the claims."

In pleadings submitted to the court, Channel 4's lawyers spelt out what they said Deer's programme had alleged. It said that Wakefield:

:(i) Had dishonestly and irresponsibly spread fear that the MMR vaccine might cause autism in some children, "even though he knew that his own laboratory's tests dramatically contradicted his claims and he knew or ought to have known that there was absolutely no scientific basis at all for his belief that MMR should be broken up into single vaccines."

:(ii) In spreading such fear, also acted dishonestly and irresponsibly, by repeatedly failing to disclose conflicts of interest and/or material information, including his association with contemplated litigation against the manufacturers of MMR and his application for a patent for a vaccine for measles which, if effective, and if the MMR vaccine had been undermined and/or withdrawn on safety grounds, would have been commercially very valuable.

:(iii) Caused medical colleagues serious unease by carrying out research tests on vulnerable children outside the terms or in breach of the permission given by an ethics committee, in particular by subjecting those children to highly invasive and sometimes distressing clinical procedures and thereby abusing them.

:(iv) Has been unremittingly evasive and dishonest in an effort to cover up his wrong-doing.

Proceedings continued for two years, but in December 2006, Deer reported figures obtained from the Legal Services Commission showing that it had paid £435,643 in undisclosed fees to Wakefield for him to build a case against the MMR vaccine, payments which ''The Sunday Times'' reported had begun two years before the ''Lancet'' paper.

Within days of Deer's report, Wakefield dropped all his libel actions and was required to pay all the defendants' legal costs.

Other concerns

Other concerns regarding Wakefield were that an extension of his project caused life-threatening complications in one child, who received substantial compensation in an out-of-court settlement. Wakefield's data were also questioned; a former graduate student, who appeared in Deer's programme, later testified that Wakefield ignored laboratory data which conflicted with his hypothesis. An independent investigation of a collaborating laboratory questioned the accuracy of the data underpinning Wakefield's claims.

In June 2005, the BBC programme ''Horizon'' reported on an unnamed and unpublished study of blood samples from a group of 100 autistic children and 200 children without autism. They reported finding 99% of the samples contained no trace of the measles virus, and the samples that did contain the virus were just as likely to be from non-autistic children, i.e. only three samples contained the measles virus, one from an autistic child and two from a neuro-typical child. The study's authors found no evidence of any link between MMR and autism.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the United States National Academy of Sciences, along with the CDC and the UK National Health Service, have found no link between vaccines and autism. Reviews in the medical literature have also found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism or with bowel disease, which Wakefield called "autistic enterocolitis."

General Medical Council hearings

Between July 2007 and May 2010, a 217-day "fitness to practise" hearing of the UK General Medical Council examined charges of professional misconduct against Wakefield and two colleagues involved in the ''Lancet'' paper. The charges included that he: "Was being paid to conduct the study by solicitors representing parents who believed their children had been harmed by MMR". Ordered investigations "without the requisite paediatric qualifications" including colonoscopies, colon biopsies and lumbar punctures ("spinal taps") on his research subjects without the approval of his department's ethics board and contrary to the children's clinical interests, when these diagnostic tests were not indicated by the children's symptoms or medical history. "Act[ed] 'dishonestly and irresponsibly' in failing to disclose ... how patients were recruited for the study". "Conduct[ed] the study on a basis which was not approved by the hospital's ethics committee." Purchased blood samples - for £5 each - from children present at his son's birthday party, which Wakefield joked about in a later presentation.

Wakefield denied the charges; on 28 January 2010, the GMC ruled against Wakefield on all issues, stating that he had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted against the interests of his patients, and "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his controversial research. On 24 May 2010 he was struck off the United Kingdom medical register; co-author John Walker-Smith was also struck from the medical register, while junior author Simon Murch was cleared. On the same day, Wakefield's autobiography, ''Callous Disregard'' was published. It argued that he had been unfairly treated by the medical and scientific establishment.

Fraud and conflict of interest allegations

In February 2009, ''The Sunday Times'' reported that a further investigation by the newspaper had revealed that Wakefield "changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism", citing evidence obtained by the newspaper from medical records and interviews with witnesses, and supported by evidence presented to the GMC.

In April 2010, Deer expanded on laboratory aspects of his findings in a report in the ''BMJ'', recounting how normal clinical histopathology results (obtained from the Royal Free hospital) had been subjected to wholesale changes, from normal to abnormal, in the medical school and published in ''The Lancet''. On 2 January 2011, Deer provided two tables comparing the data on the twelve children, showing the original hospital data and the data with the wholesale changes as used in the 1998 ''Lancet'' article.

On 5 January 2011, ''BMJ'' published an article by Brian Deer entitled "How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed". Deer, funded by ''The Sunday Times'' of London and Channel 4 television network, said that, based on examination of the medical records of the 12 children in the original study, his research had found:

: "The Lancet paper was a case series of 12 child patients; it reported a proposed “new syndrome” of enterocolitis and regressive autism and associated this with MMR as an “apparent precipitating event.” But in fact:

:: "Three of nine children reported with regressive autism did not have autism diagnosed at all. Only one child clearly had regressive autism;

:: "Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were “previously normal,” five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns;

:: "Some children were reported to have experienced first behavioural symptoms within days of MMR, but the records documented these as starting some months after vaccination;

:: "In nine cases, unremarkable colonic histopathology results—noting no or minimal fluctuations in inflammatory cell populations—were changed after a medical school “research review” to “non-specific colitis”;

:: "The parents of eight children were reported as blaming MMR, but 11 families made this allegation at the hospital. The exclusion of three allegations — all giving times to onset of problems in months — helped to create the appearance of a 14 day temporal link;

:: "Patients were recruited through anti-MMR campaigners, and the study was commissioned and funded for planned litigation."

In an accompanying editorial, ''BMJ'' editors said:

Clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare ... Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield. Is it possible that he was wrong, but not dishonest: that he was so incompetent that he was unable to fairly describe the project, or to report even one of the 12 children's cases accurately? No. A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was gross. Moreover, although the scale of the GMC's 217 day hearing precluded additional charges focused directly on the fraud, the panel found him guilty of dishonesty concerning the study's admissions criteria, its funding by the Legal Aid Board, and his statements about it afterwards.

In a ''BMJ'' follow-up article on 11 January 2011, Deer said that based upon documents he obtained under Freedom of information legislation, Wakefield—in partnership with the father of one of the boys in the study—had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing". ''The Washington Post'' reported that Deer said that Wakefield predicted he "could make more than $43 million a year from diagnostic kits" for the new condition, autistic enterocolitis. According to Deer's report in ''BMJ'', the ventures, Immunospecifics Biotechnologies Ltd and Carmel Healthcare Ltd—named after Wakefield’s wife—failed after Wakefield's superiors at University College London's medical school gave him a two-page letter that said:

"We remain concerned about a possible serious conflict of interest between your academic employment by UCL, and your involvement with Carmel ... This concern arose originally because the company's business plan appears to depend on premature, scientifically unjustified publication of results, which do not conform to the rigorous academic and scientific standards that are generally expected."

WebMD reported on Deer's ''BMJ'' report, saying that the $43 million predicted yearly profits would come from marketing kits for "diagnosing patients with autism" and that "the initial market for the diagnostic will be litigation-driven testing of patients with AE [autistic enterocolitis, an unproven condition concocted by Wakefield] from both the UK and the USA". According to WebMD, the ''BMJ'' article also claimed that Carmel Healthcare Ltd would succeed in marketing products and developing a replacement vaccine if "public confidence in the MMR vaccine was damaged".

Journal retractions

On 2 February 2010, ''The Lancet'' formally retracted Wakefield's 1998 paper. The retraction states that "the claims in the original paper that children were 'consecutively referred' and that investigations were 'approved' by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false".

The following day the editor of a specialist journal, ''Neurotoxicology'', withdrew another Wakefield paper that was in press. The article, which concerned research on monkeys, had already been published online and sought to implicate vaccines in autism.

In May 2010, ''The American Journal of Gastroenterology'' retracted a paper of Wakefield's that used data from the 12 patients of the ''Lancet'' article.

On 5 January 2011, ''BMJ'' editors recommended that Wakefield's other publications should be scrutinized and retracted if need be.

Wakefield response

As of January 2011, Wakefield has continued to maintain his innocence. He said: : "I want to make one thing crystal clear for the record – my research and the serious medical problems found in those children were not a hoax and there was no fraud whatsoever. Nor did I seek to profit from our findings. ... despite media reports to the contrary, the results of my research have been duplicated in five other countries ... I continue to fully support more independent research to determine if environmental triggers, including vaccines, are causing autism and other developmental problems. ... Since the Lancet paper, I have lost my job, my career and my country. To claim that my motivation was profit is patently untrue. I will not be deterred – this issue is far too important."

According to ''BMJ'', he says "he never claimed that the children had regressive autism, nor that he said they were previously normal. He never misreported or changed any findings in the study, and never patented a measles vaccine. None of the children were [attorney] Barr's clients before referral to the hospital, and he never received huge payments from the lawyer. There were no conflicts of interest. He is the victim of a conspiracy. He never linked autism with MMR."

In an internet radio interview, Wakefield said the ''BMJ'' series "was utter nonsense" and denied "that he used the cases of the 12 children in his study to promote his business venture". Although Deer is funded by ''The Sunday Times'' and Channel 4, he has filed financial disclosure forms and denies receiving any funding from the pharmaceutical industry, who Wakefield says is paying him. According to CNN, Wakefield said the patent he held was for "an 'over-the-counter nutritional supplement' that boosts the immune system". WebMD reported that Wakefield said he was the victim of "a ruthless, pragmatic attempt to crush any attempt to investigate valid vaccine safety concerns".

Wakefield claims that Deer is a "hit man who was brought in to take [him] down" and that other scientists have simply taken Deer at his word. While on ''Anderson Cooper 360°'', claiming he hadn't read the ''BMJ'' articles yet, he denied their validity and denied that Deer had interviewed the families of the children in the study. He also urged viewers to read his book, ''Callous Disregard'', which he claimed would explain why he was being targeted, to which Anderson Cooper replied: "But, sir, if you're lying, then your book is also a lie. If your study is a lie, your book is a lie."

Wakefield would later imply that there is a conspiracy by public health officials and pharmaceutical companies to discredit him, including suggesting they pay bloggers to post rumors about him on websites or that they artificially inflated reports of deaths from measles.

Deer counter response

Deer responded to Wakefield's charge by challenging Wakefield to sue him for libel:

: "If it is true that Andrew Wakefield is not guilty as charged, he has the remedy of bringing a libel action against myself, the ''Sunday Times of London'', against the medical journal here, and he would be the richest man in America." He also noted that Wakefield has previously sued him and lost.

On 5 April 2011, Deer was named the UK's specialist journalist of the year in the British Press Awards, organised by the Society of Editors. The judges said that his investigation of Wakefield was a "tremendous righting of a wrong".

Epidemics and effects

Physicians, medical journals, and editors have made statements tying Wakefield's fraudulent actions to various epidemics and deaths. Michael J. Smith, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Louisville, an "infectious diseases expert who has studied the autism controversy's effect on immunization rates", said, "Clearly, the results of this [Wakefield] study have had repercussions."

The Associated Press said:

: "Immunization rates in Britain dropped from 92 percent to 73 percent, and were as low as 50 percent in some parts of London. The effect was not nearly as dramatic in the United States, but researchers have estimated that as many as 125,000 U.S. children born in the late 1990s did not get the MMR vaccine because of the Wakefield splash."

ABC News Channel WWAY3 said:

: "Since Dr. Andrew Wakefield's study was released in 1998, many parents have been convinced the measels, mumps and rubella vaccine could lead to autism. But that study may have done more harm than good. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than any year since 1997. More than 90 percent of those infected had not been vaccinated, or their vaccination status was not known."

Paul Hébert, editor-in-chief of the ''Canadian Medical Association Journal'' (CMAJ) said:

: "There has been a huge impact from the Wakefield fiasco ... This spawned a whole anti-vaccine movement. Great Britain has seen measles outbreaks. It probably resulted in a lot of deaths."

A profile in a New York Times Magazine article noted:

:"Andrew Wakefield has become one of the most reviled doctors of his generation, blamed directly and indirectly, depending on the accuser, for irresponsibly starting a panic with tragic repercussions: vaccination rates so low that childhood diseases once all but eradicated here — whooping cough and measles, among them — have re-emerged, endangering young lives."

Journalist Brian Deer called for criminal charges to be brought against Wakefield.

Despite the allegations of misconduct and fraud, Wakefield continues to rely on the monetary and emotional support of fans who continue to support him. J. B. Handley of the autism and anti-vaccine advocacy group Generation Rescue noted, "To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one."

On April 1 2011, the James Randi Educational Foundation awarded Wakefield the Pigasus Award for "refusal to face reality".

Selected publications

;Books ;Journals Withdrawn: :* Retracted: :* Retracted:

See also

List of vaccine topics

References

External links

"Secrets of the MMR scare: The Lancet’s two days to bury bad news" - Brian Deer, ''BMJ'' 18 January 2011; 342:c7001 doi: 10.1136/bmj.c7001

"Assuring research integrity in the wake of Wakefield" - DJ Opel, DS Diekema, EK Marcuse, ''BMJ'' 18 January 2011; 342:d2 doi: 10.1136/bmj.d2

"How campaigners and the media push bad science" - Andy Alaszewski, ''BMJ'' 18 January 2011; 342:d236 doi: 10.1136/bmj.d236

"Institutional and editorial misconduct in the MMR scare" - Fiona Godlee, editor, ''BMJ'' 19 January 2011; 342:d378 doi: 10.1136/bmj.d378

"The Vaccine War" - ''PBS'' FRONTLINE documentary, 27 April 2010

Category:Medical Scandals Category:MMR vaccine controversy Category:Anti-vaccination activists Category:Health fraud Category:Scientific misconduct Category:Living people Category:1957 births Category:Date of birth missing (living people) Category:Place of birth missing (living people) Category:British medical researchers Category:Alumni of Imperial College London Category:People educated at King Edward's School, Bath

af:Andrew Wakefield de:Andrew Wakefield fr:Andrew Wakefield pt:Andrew Wakefield fi:Andrew Wakefield vi:Andrew Wakefield

name	Brian Deer
birth date
education	University of Warwick
occupation	Investigative journalist
nationality	British
years active
credits	Investigative reporting on medical issues and the pharmaceutical industry
url	http://briandeer.com }}

Brian Deer is a British investigative reporter, best known for inquiries into the drug industry, medicine and social issues for the ''Sunday Times'' of London.

Career

After graduating in philosophy from the University of Warwick, he became editor and press officer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and was a member of ''The Leveller'' magazine collective. Subsequently he joined ''The Times'', then ''The Sunday Times'', first as a business news subeditor and then as a staff news reporter and feature writer. In the 1980s, under Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil, he was the UK's first social affairs correspondent, and between 1990 and 1992 reported from the United States.

Investigations

One of Deer's early investigations caused uproar in the drug industry when in 1986 he revealed that research into the safety of the contraceptive pill was fabricated at Deakin University, Australia, by scientist Professor Michael Briggs, employed by the German company Schering AG. In 1994, his investigation of The Wellcome Trust led to the withdrawal in the UK of a blockbuster antibiotic, Septrin, Bactrim, and the sale of the trust's pharmaceutical subsidiary Wellcome Foundation. In 2005, the withdrawal of the Merck painkiller Vioxx was followed by an investigation by Deer into the British medical chiefs behind the drug's introduction. In 2008, a celebrity psychiatrist, Raj Persaud, was suspended from practising medicine and resigned his academic position after being found guilty of plagiarism following a Deer investigation.

MMR vaccine controversy

In a series of reports between 2004 and 2010, Deer investigated concerns over the MMR vaccine, their publication in ''The Lancet'' medical journal in February 1998, and their chief proponent Andrew Wakefield. Deer's investigation led to the longest-ever inquiry by the UK General Medical Council. In January 2010, the GMC judged Wakefield to be "dishonest", "unethical" and "callous", and on 24 May 2010, he was struck off the UK medical register. Responding to Deer's findings, ''The Lancet'' partially retracted Wakefield's research in February 2004, and fully retracted it in February 2010 following the GMC findings. In 2011, Deer published his findings in the ''BMJ'' with an endorsement by the editors.

Deer's television documentary: "MMR: What they didn't tell you", a one-hour ''Dispatches'' documentary for Channel 4, first broadcast 18 November 2004, became the core subject of a libel case. Wakefield, who initiated the case, eventually dropped it, becoming liable for the costs incurred by Deer and the other defendants. Deer's documentary "The drug trial that went wrong", nominated for a Royal Television Society journalism award, investigated the experimental monoclonal antibody TGN1412.

Honours

Working for ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'' Deer received several awards, including a British Press Award for his investigations.

Deer was the 2009 Susan B Meister lecturer in child health policy at the University of Michigan.

In February 2011, he was nominated for two further British Press Awards, in the categories of news reporter of the year and specialist journalist of the year, the latter of which he won on 5 April 2011.

References

External links

briandeer.com - Deer's personal website

Radio interview with Brian Deer on the MMR vaccine controversy from CBC Radio's ''The Sunday Edition''

Category:Living people Category:British reporters and correspondents Category:Investigative journalists Category:Alumni of the University of Warwick Category:MMR vaccine controversy Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Place of birth missing (living people)

name	Bill Gates
birth date	October 28, 1955
birth place	Seattle, Washington, U.S.
birth name	William Henry Gates III
occupation	Chairman of MicrosoftChairman of CorbisCo-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationDirector of Berkshire HathawayCEO of Cascade Investment
years active	1975–present
nationality	American
net worth	US$56 billion (2011)
religion	Agnostic
spouse
children	3
residence	Medina, Washington, U.S.
alma mater	Harvard University (Dropout)
website	Bill Gates
signature	BillGates Signature.svg
parents	William H. Gates, Sr.Mary Maxwell Gates }}

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a number of industry insiders criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates' last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.

Early life

Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates, of English, German, and Scotch-Irish descent. His family was upper middle class; his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way, and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix. Early on in his life, Gates' parents had a law career in mind for him. When Gates was young, his family regularly attended a Congregational church.

At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy an Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about the machine." After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.

At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when the company went out of business. The following year, Information Sciences, Inc. hired the four Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students. He later stated that "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success." At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. In early 1973, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft.

In his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by Harry Lewis, one of his professors. Gates' solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years; its successor is faster by only one percent. His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.

Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, joining him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.

Microsoft

BASIC

After reading the January 1975 issue of ''Popular Electronics'' that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque. Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

Microsoft's BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment. This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems. The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.

During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.

IBM partnership

In 1980, IBM approached Microsoft to write the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000. Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system. They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.

Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates President of Microsoft and the Chairman of the Board.

Windows

Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, mounting creative differences undermined the partnership. Gates distributed an internal memo on May 16, 1991, announcing that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would shift its efforts to the Windows NT kernel development.

Management style

From Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for the company's product strategy. He aggressively broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it. He gained a reputation for being distant to others; as early as 1981 an industry executive complained in public that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls."

As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. Firsthand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk. He often interrupted presentations with such comments as, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" and, "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?" The target of his outburst then had to defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend."

Gates' role at Microsoft for most of its history was primarily a management and executive role. However, he was an active software developer in the early years, particularly on the company's programming language products. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but wrote code as late as 1989 that shipped in the company's products. On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.

Antitrust litigation

Many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices have had Gates' approval. In the 1998 ''United States v. Microsoft'' case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words like "compete", "concerned" and "we". ''BusinessWeek'' reported:

}}

Gates later said he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. As to his demeanor during the deposition, he said, "Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty. Whatever that penalty is should be levied against me: rudeness to Boies in the first degree." Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and tying, and blocking competition, both in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Appearance in ads

Gates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first commercial, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90-second talk between strangers as Seinfeld walks up on a discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and notices Gates buying shoes inside. The salesman is trying to sell Mr. Gates shoes that are a size too big. As Gates is buying the shoes, he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his own mugshot of his arrest in New Mexico in 1977 for a traffic violation. As they are walking out of the mall, Seinfeld asks Gates if he has melded his mind to other developers, after getting a yes, he then asks if they are working on a way to make computers edible, again getting a yes. Some say that this is an homage to Seinfeld's own show about "nothing" (''Seinfeld''). In a second commercial in the series, Gates and Seinfeld are at the home of an average family trying to fit in with normal people.

Post-Microsoft

Since leaving Microsoft, Gates continues his philanthropy and, among other projects, purchased the video rights to the Messenger Lectures series called ''The Character of Physical Law'', given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964 and recorded by the BBC. The videos are available online to the public at Microsoft's Project Tuva.

In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their futures.

Personal life

Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children: daughter Jennifer Katharine Gates (born 1996), son Rory John Gates (born 1999), and daughter Phoebe Adele Gates (born 2002). The Gates's home is an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000.

His estate has a swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a gym and a dining room.

Also among Gates' private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994. Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from ''The Great Gatsby''. He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf.

Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on ''Forbes'' list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a "centibillionaire". Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought. Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett. In March 2010 Bill Gates was bumped down to the second wealthiest man behind Carlos Slim.

Philanthropy

Gates began to appreciate the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted suggesting that he could give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations into one to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world. The foundation allows benefactors access to information regarding how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations. As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity.

The foundation was at the same time criticized because it invests assets that it has not yet distributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been charged with worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily, and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world. In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments, to assess social responsibility. It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.

Gates's wife urged people to learn a lesson from the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, which had sold its home and given away half of its value, as detailed in ''The Power of Half''. Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO) signed a promise they called the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge", in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time.

Recognition

In 1987, Gates was officially declared a billionaire in the pages of Forbes' 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. As the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he'd been worth the year before, when he'd debuted on the list.

''Time'' magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. ''Time'' also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time". Gates was listed in the ''Sunday Times'' power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by ''Chief Executive Officers magazine'' in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by ''Time'' in 1998, ranked number two in the ''Upside'' Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in ''The Guardian'' as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.

In 1994, he was honoured as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000; the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007; Harvard University in June 2007; the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, in January 2008, and Cambridge University in June 2009. He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007. Gates was also made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005, in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, ''Eristalis gatesi'', in his honor.

In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "''Un país de lectores"''. In October 2009, it was announced that Gates will be awarded the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership of The Franklin Institute for his achievements in business and for his philanthropic work. In 2010 he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.

Investments

Cascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding company, incorporated in United States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, Washington.

bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates.

Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company.

TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company.

Bibliography

Gates has authored two books:

''The Road Ahead'' (1995)

''Business @ the Speed of Thought'' (1999)

Filmography

Gates has appeared in at least one film: ''Waiting For Superman''

See also

List of billionaires (also see List of college dropout billionaires and List of wealthiest non-inflated historical figures)

Paul Allen – Microsoft's co-founder, friend, and fellow billionaire

Books

References

Further reading

"The Meaning of Bill Gates: As his reign at Microsoft comes to an end, so does the era he dominated", ''The Economist'', June 28, 2008.

External links

The Gates Notes ''official site''

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Profile at Microsoft

Profile at Forbes

How I Work: Bill Gates, ''Fortune'', March 30, 2006

Category:1955 births Category:American billionaires Category:American computer businesspeople Category:American chief executives Category:American computer programmers Category:American philanthropists Category:American technology writers Category:Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation people Category:Businesspeople in software Category:Harvard University people Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Category:Microsoft employees Category:History of Microsoft Category:National Medal of Technology recipients Category:Living people Category:People from Seattle, Washington Category:People from King County, Washington Category:Windows people Category:Fellows of the British Computer Society Category:American people of Scottish descent

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