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MMR jab scare research 'an elaborate fraud'
Research which triggered a major scare over a link between autism and the MMR vaccine has been branded "an elaborate fraud".
In a hard-hitting editorial, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said the study which sparked public alarm in 1998 was deliberately rigged to support a theory that the vaccine given to millions of children could lead to autism.
It said damage from the research paper continued to resonate but such "clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare".
BMJ editor Fiona Godlee said further reviews into the work of disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield, who continues to deny wrongdoing, should now be carried out.
Wakefield was last year struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council which found he had acted in a way that was "dishonest", "misleading" and "irresponsible" over the article in the Lancet medical journal.
It implied a potential link between the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella and a "new syndrome" of autism and bowel disease and led to a massive decline in the numbers of children getting the triple jab. Subsequent studies involving millions of children have found no such link.
Dr Godlee said "the MMR scare was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud".
She said she was struck by the similarity between the deception and that of Piltdown man, the paleontological hoax that led people to believe for 40 years that the missing link between man and ape had been found, until it was exposed in 1953.
She questioned the veracity of Wakefield's other publications and called for an investigation "to decide whether any others should be retracted".
The BMJ said for the first time it was exposing the full extent of "the scam behind the scare" based on interviews, documents and data collected during seven years of inquiries by investigative journalist Brian Deer.
He claims Wakefield "manufactured" a syndrome at the same time as receiving money from legal teams seeking to discredit the safety of the MMR vaccine but his fraud went beyond "academic vanity".
"It unleashed fear, parental guilt, costly government intervention and outbreaks of infectious disease," he said.
The BMJ said it had used the GMC's six million word transcript of the case against Wakefield to check findings to confirm the extent of falsification in the Lancet paper.
It said this showed Wakefield altered numerous facts about patients' medical histories to support his claims but it also goes on to criticise the Royal Free Hospital and Medical School in London, where he worked, for supporting him and points to failures among key players investigating concerns about the work.
In an editorial, Dr Godlee and colleagues conclude there was "no doubt" it was Wakefield who perpetrated the fraud.
"A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was gross."
Yet they said he had repeatedly denied doing anything wrong at all.
"Instead, although now disgraced and stripped of his clinical and academic credentials, he continues to push his views. Meanwhile the damage to public health continues,"
Dr Godlee added: "Science is based on trust. Such a breach of trust is deeply shocking. And even though almost certainly rare on this scale, it raises important questions about how this could happen, what could have been done to uncover it earlier, what further inquiry is now needed, and what can be done to prevent something like this happening again."
PUBLICITY resulted in 'endemic' measles
The MMR vaccine scare quickly took off when links between the jab and autism and bowel disease were claimed in a research paper in 1998.
Critics pointed out the study involving only 12 patients was small.
But later examination revealed serious flaws in the way the research was carried out and it was retracted in 2004.
However, the publicity led to a dramatic fall in uptake of the MMR vaccine which still remains below recommended levels, prompting an increase in cases of measles which was declared endemic for the first time in 14 years in England and Wales in 2008.
The scare has also damaged public confidence in vaccines generally and is likely to have played a part in distrust among some patients of this season's flu vaccine, leading to lower take-up of the jab in recent months.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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