Robert De Niro News: Actor Pulls Out Anti-vaccination Movie From Tribeca Film Festival
Famed actor Robert de Niro pulled out a film that slammed the link between autism and vaccinations. The movie was removed from the Tribeca film festival after he took advice from "the scientific community" and discovered some "concerns with certain things in this film".
Being the father of an autistic child, this co-founder of the festival had earlier put up some defence of his decision to premiere 'Vaxxed: from Cover-Up to Catastrophe,' in spite of protests from doctors and experts.
Strangely, there have been a number of studies that have not found a link between the two. Yet, some activists perceive that vaccinations lead to autism and that vaccinations might somehow harm children.
On Saturday, he released a statement: "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," he said.
"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."
The loaded movie was directed by Andrew Wakefield. He is a "disgraced" British former doctor whose past record is equally murky. In 1998, he said that there are links between a vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and autism.
Having found a number of flaws in the paper, the study was immediately denounced by the British Medical Journal as "an elaborate fraud".
It had been published by The Lancet in 2010 when Wakefield was deprived of his licence to be a practising doctor in the UK.
In a trailer, Wakefield claimed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have secret evidence to support him. One image showed smoke swirling out of a syringe, and a nearby ad that said: "Are our children safe?"
There was an outcry from doctors and film-makers, asking him to remove the film.
