There has been a controversy regarding the causative link of vaccines with autism. A report appeared in the British Medical Journal this Wednesday that stated that Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the lead author of a major study to imply such a link had falsified the medical histories of all 12 patients in his study and that he was “hoping to sue vaccine manufacturers and to create a vaccine scare.”
The Wakefield study appeared in the journal Lancet in 1998 and it linked the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. Although Wakefield continues to defend it. But 10 of his co-authors have repudiated it. Last year it was formally retracted by The Lancet. And after a months-long hearing, Wakefield and his senior research advisor had their medical licenses revoked for unethical treatment of patients.
Wakefield’s study suggested that the vaccine caused a gastrointestinal syndrome in susceptible children, and that this syndrome triggered autism. The team had looked into a series of 12 children treated consecutively at a large London hospital. Wakefield and colleagues reported that all 12 children had intestinal abnormalities and developmental regression beginning one to 14 days after MMR vaccination.
The latest report in the BMJ is a result of a detailed woke by U.K. investigative reporter Brian Deer who found that the Wakefield study was faked. In an accompanying editorial Fiona Godlee and colleagues wrote, “Deer unearthed evidence of clear falsification… Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield’s.”
According to Deer some major discrepancies of the study included the fact that the children were not selected randomly and all were recruited through anti-MMR-vaccine campaigners. Wakefield was an interested party in the case against the vaccine manufacturer as he was acting as a paid consultant to a U.K. lawyer who was suing MMR vaccine makers for damages. Wakefield was paid about $668,000 plus expenses. All these children were said to have some evidence of developmental problems before receiving the MMR vaccine. Only one of the 12 children in the study had regressive autism, although the study reported that nine of them had this condition. Three of these nine children were never diagnosed with autism. In nine cases, gut examinations of the children were changed from “unremarkable” to “non-specific colitis.” For all 12 children in the study, medical records and parent accounts contradict case descriptions in the published study. This evidence shows that the Wakefield study was a fake and a fraud.
Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland said, “Unfortunately, his core group of supporters is not going to let the facts dissuade their beliefs that [the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine] causes autism…They need to be open-minded and examine the information as everybody else.”
Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a vocal critic of the anti-vaccine movement added, “The war has been won, but there are residual damages. ... It’s hard to un-scare people. It’s very easy to scare them, but hard to reassure them.”
Experts believe that the link is a controversy since autism first appears in toddlers when they are receiving their childhood vaccination series. An apparently normal child suddenly loses the ability to speak and to relate to others. After the study many parents were convinced that their children’s autism was caused by the MMR vaccine. They hired lawyers to sue vaccine makers for damages. But there was little scientific evidence linking the vaccine to autism.
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