Investigators confirm landmark autism study was bogus

Investigators confirm landmark autism study was bogus

A 1998 autism study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his team linking the MMR vaccine to the developmental disorder was "an elaborate fraud" according to investigators who looked at the veracity of Wakefield's findings. The new analysis of British researchers appeared Thursday in the online version of the journal BMJ.

Wakefield's work was hailed as a landmark study then on the field of autism research. But an examination of hospital records revealed that Wakefield changed the medical histories of the 12 children who participated in his study. Five of the twelve children were also documented to have had developmental problems prior to the study, in contrast to Wakefield's claims that all of them were normal before receiving the MMR shots.

The autism study by Wakefield had been earlier discredited and he had been stripped of his British medical license last May. Ten of his 13 co-authors had withdrawn their names from the study after finding out that it was funded by lawyers pursuing cases against vaccine makers. The medical journal Lancet, which published the study, also pulled out Wakefield's autism paper.

Many parents and health officials became concerned about the use of MMR vaccines on their children when the study came out. Measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations have declined since. "Meanwhile, the damage to public health continues, fueled by unbalanced media reporting and an ineffective response from government, researchers, journals and the medical profession," BMJ said in an editorial that came with the investigation.

Wakefield's findings based on his autism study that links vaccines and autism have not been accepted by most medical researchers and doctors.

Posted by George Daniels on Thursday January 06 2011, 1:28 AM EST. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0