Experts in Britain wholeheartedly back MMR jab

Jul 16 2007

A disciplinary hearing due to begin this week in the UK may well settle the debate over any link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) and autism.

British doctor Andrew Wakefield along with two other doctors, John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch, are facing charges of serious misconduct over their research on the MMR vaccine by General Medical Council (GMC).

The three doctors were employed at the Royal Free Hospital’s medical school in London, with honorary clinical contracts at the hospital and research they carried out there has come into dispute.

Research by Dr. Wakefield and a dozen other doctors on 12 children at the Royal Free Hospital in North London triggered a health scare over the safety of the triple vaccine with a study published in The Lancet in 1998 suggesting that there could be a link between the triple jab and bowel disease and autism.

The publicity surrounding the research created enormous controversy and led to a fall in the numbers of children being immunised.

The MMR vaccine has since become a highly contentious issue and there is a danger the GMC hearing could become bogged down in assessing the validity of competing scientific theories on MMR and autism.

In order to avoid this happening the Royal Colleges of Paediatricians, General Practitioners, Pathologists and Physicians, the Medical Research Council, the British Medical Association and Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, along with others, have released a statement ahead of the hearing declaring that they support the large body of scientific evidence showing no link between the vaccine and autism.

The GMC panel will hear allegations that Dr. Wakefield and Professors Walker-Smith and Murch did not act in the best interests of children and are unfit to practice medicine.

The GMC has accused the doctors of several allegations, including that Dr. Wakefield took blood samples from children at a birthday party after offering them money, and that colonoscopies and lumbar punctures were preformed on children without proper approval and contrary to the children’s clinical interests.

Dr. Wakefield who is currently working in Texas, and Professor Walker-Smith are accused of acting "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in failing to disclose in the study how they recruited patients for the study.

Dr. Wakefield also stands accused of taking payment for advising solicitors on legal action by parents who believed their children had been harmed by MMR, and ordering investigations "without the requisite paediatric qualifications".

All three are also accused of conducting the study on a basis not approved by the hospital’s ethics committee; they have denied all of the charges.

The GMC emphasises that their role is to investigate complaints about individual doctors in order to establish whether their fitness to practice is impaired and whether to remove or restrict a doctor's registration.

The GMC says it does not regard arbitrating between competing scientific theories generated in the course of medical research as part of their role.

Figures published last week now suggest autism is far more prevalent than first thought and as many as one in 58 children have some form of the disorder.

The World Health Organisation says the MMR vaccine has an outstanding safety record.