Gordon Stewart

Gordon Thallon Stewart (5 February 1919 – 10 October 2016) was a Scottish epidemiologist and public health physician who served as the Henry Mechan Professor of Public Health at the University of Glasgow from 1972 to 1984.

Early life and education

Stewart was born on 5 February 1919 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. He graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1939 with a BSc degree. In 1984, he was commissioned to write a report on the whooping cough vaccine by Britain's chief scientific officer, but the report was never made public by the then-British Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke.

Views on vaccines

In the 1970s, Stewart became well known for his opposition to the pertussis vaccine, which he claimed to have supported until 1974, when he saw many vaccinated children who had still developed pertussis. By the mid-1970s, his criticisms of vaccines had attracted the attention of many parents who felt that their children had been injured by vaccines. In 1977, he published a paper citing the cases of many of these children as proof that the DPT vaccine caused brain damage. He also claimed that it was safer to get pertussis than to receive the vaccine.

Public health consequences

Stewart's public criticisms of vaccines contributed to a dramatic decrease in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom, and a resulting increase in cases of pertussis there. The host of the report, Lea Thompson, introduced Stewart as a member of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, despite the fact that he had never been a member of this group. Thompson also did not mention any of Stewart's previous associations with parents who believed their children had been injured by vaccines, nor did she note that his research had been used by some such parents as evidence in lawsuits. Stewart and Herxheimer both served on Thabo Mbeki's presidential advisory panel on AIDS. In a 1990 Dispatches episode about HIV/AIDS, Stewart claimed that HIV had not spread significantly among heterosexuals in either the United States or Great Britain, dismissing the disease's spread in Africa as "something else". Epidemiologist Roy M. Anderson dismissed this claim, arguing that Stewart "would benefit from becoming aware of the scientific literature". In 1995, he argued against giving azidothymidine to pregnant women who had AIDS, even though it had already been shown to be effective at preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. In 1997, he co-authored an article in Current Medical Research and Opinion along with several HIV/AIDS denialists, including Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos of the Perth Group. In 2000, he told the Guardian: "We have been criminally irresponsible - we have told people they have Aids when they are HIV positive and that's not true. We have told them there is no cure and no vaccine and they are going to die. We have caused endless stress and even suicide. Families have worried about whether their children are going to be infected. That's why it is such a panic disease. The medical establishment has made the panic." With respect to his views on the cause of AIDS, he was an outspoken supporter of Peter Duesberg's belief that it was not HIV, and argued that there was a conspiracy aimed at preventing such views from attracting public attention.