The study that triggered worldwide controversy over childhood vaccinations linked to autism was found to be based on widely discredited research, according to a new report published in the British Medical Journal — the first scientific publication to name the scandal as scientific fraud.
A paper published in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield, which linked the childhood MMR vaccine to autism, reverberates to this day – even though the study was renounced by 10 of 13 authors and eventually retracted by the Lancet, the journal that published the study.
In the 1998 paper, Wakefield claimed that parents of two-thirds of the 12 children in the study blamed MMR for the sudden onset of inflammatory bowel disease and autism. Current research into the medical records of these children found that allthe child cases in Wakefield’s study were misrepresented, some more so than others. Some children Wakefield claimed to have autism turned out to be healthy, while others who he claimed got sick after they were vaccinated appear to have already been sick before the vaccinations.
Additionally, although Wakefield appeared to be an independent researcher, reporter Brian Deer uncovered that Wakefield was payrolled to create evidence against the shot. Further research found that Wakefield also had filed a patent on products such as his own “safer” single measles vaccine.
