Since the quest for a smallpox vaccine started there has been a certain amount of pushback. The modern wave of vaccine skepticism has its origins in the 1970s. That was when concerns (later determined to be unfounded) about the safety of a whole-cell vaccine against pertussis, or whooping cough, came to the fore in many high-income countries. In the 1980s and 1990s, a few organized groups opposed to vaccines emerged in many countries, including the United Kingdom. And so it was in 1998 that Andrew Wakefield, MD, and two colleagues published a study in the UK publication, The Lancet.
The 1998 study was a case series of 12 child patients that reported a proposed “new syndrome” of enterocolitis and regressive autism and associated this with MMR as an “apparent precipitating event,” the researchers wrote. The truth is that the patients were recruited through anti-MMR campaigners, and the study was commissioned and funded for planned litigation. It has been proven that Wakefield and his colleagues altered numerous facts about the patients’ medical histories to support the claim. Additionally, Wakefield’s institution, the Royal Free Hospital and Medical School in London, supported him and had knowledge of his intentional deceit in order to profit.
This 1998 paper wasn't the first study Wakefield had attempted to gain traction with or force a correlation between various health issues. For example, Wakefield authored a paper in 1995, also in The Lancet, claiming that measles vaccination was associated with inflammatory bowel disease. That paper compared disease occurrence in two unrelated cohorts — a child-health study from before measles vaccines were introduced, and a study of another group after its introduction. The cohorts were selected using dissimilar recruitment and follow-up methods, and from different populations. This apples-with-brussels-sprouts comparison was criticized at the time by scientists at the US Food and Drug Administration and at the Department of Health in England, and by others with expertise in statistics, epidemiology, virology, and related disciplines.
Following the 1998 publication, two things happened. One, MMR vaccination rates dramatically decreased in the UK, and two, the scientific community said "whaaaaaaa?" Those who already had some kind of vaccine hesitancy allowed the "study" to bolster their bias, and others started doing research of their own. During the next 10 years, epidemiological studies consistently found no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
In 2003, Brian Deer, a British journalist, became interested in Wakefield's claims after a discrepancy between an interview with the mother of one of the children included in the 1998 study and the descriptions in the paper itself gave him one of the first clues that something sinister was afoot. In 2010 Deer, through the British Medical Journal (BMJ), published a series of articles exposing the fraud he had uncovered through several years of investigative work. Deer's deep dive into Wakefield and the supposed study conducted to establish the link between the MMR vaccine and autism resulted in the following conclusion, "the original Wakefield study was not only conducted 'dishonestly' and 'irresponsibly,' but that the data are 'bogus.'"
The BMJ's publication of Deer's work led to the U.K. General Medical Council doing their own investigation which confirmed Brian Deer's research and led to Andrew Wakefield being stripped of his medical license in 2012. The Lancet retracted the 1998 publication. The paper has since been completely discredited due to serious procedural errors, undisclosed financial conflicts of interest, and ethical violations.
Due to the numerous studies conducted between 1998 and 2008 that found no evidence of a link between the MMR and autism, Brian Deer's investigation, the U.K. General Medical Council's investigation the door should be clearly closed on this fraudulent and damaging vaccine scare tactic. Unfortunately, some still stubbornly cling to this myth, this lie, that has been the cause of unnecessary illness and in some cases, death.
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