Robert de Niro and the festival organization itself issued a statement a couple of days ago stating the reasons that led them to make this decision to withdraw from the Tribeca Festival's program a documentary in which vaccines are related to autism.
The main reason they have indicated is that the documentary did not contribute to the debate they expected on the subject of vaccines and their supposed relationship with neurological disorders such as autism.
Robert de Niro himself, who has a son with autism, reported the decision after watching the criticized documentary by Andrew Wakefield.
The Tribeca Film Festival is held every year since 2002 in this same neighborhood of New York. The drivers of the same were the aforementioned actor and film producer Jane Rosenthal and his intention was to recover the tone of vitality and activity of the city after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Since then there has been a gap between independent, indie and documentary film festivals such as the one they were going to present in this edition directed by Andrew Wakefield and entitled "Vaxxed: from cover up to catastrophe" in which the triple vaccine is intended to be related viral (measles, rubella, mumps) with autism.
Andrew Wakefield conducted a study on the relationship between vaccines and autism that was published by The Lancet in 1998, when he could still practice as a doctor.
Twelve years later, in 2010 the General Council of Physicians of the United Kingdom took away his medical license and made it impossible for him to practice medicine, when verifying that the study carried out and published had meant a serious lack of professionalism on the part of Wakefield given the methods used in it.
The organization of the Tribeca Film Festival had programmed it in this edition for next April 24, considering it appropriate to generate debate on this theme “which is very personal for me and my family” pointed out to the media the actor . But once viewed by the organization, by De Niro himself and by various means of the scientific community and perhaps also, thanks to the criticisms of doctors and researchers that have happened since their projection was announced, they have considered that he was not going to contribute to the debate that was expected among the spectators and attendees of the festival and have positively assessed their withdrawal from the program.
This is the trailer that you can still find on YouTube for this controversial documentary:
