This is the idiot who caused millions of dollars and years of research to go to waste. All this for 55,000 British Pound Sterling. Where are is the tar and feathers? What has Elsevier done to make it up to all of our children ? How about $100 million in Autism funding ?
The editor of the Lancet said last night that the scientific paper which sparked the row about the safety of the MMR vaccine would not have been published if senior staff had been aware that its lead author had not revealed “a serious conflict of interest”.
Richard Horton said that Andrew Wakefield, the doctor whose research suggested a link between the triple jab against measles, mumps and rubella and autism, had made “an important error of judgement” in failing to say he had received an alleged £55,000 from the Legal Aid Board, now the Legal Services Commission to investigate grounds for legal action by parents of allegedly vaccine-damaged children.
Dr Wakefield’s article, published in the medical journal six years ago, caused a drop in uptake of the MMR vaccine and protracted argument. It also made the author a pariah in the eyes of the medical establishment.
Two months ago senior doctors boycotted a televised debate on the vaccine, scheduled to run after a Channel 5 drama documentary about Dr Wakefield’s work, as they regarded it as biased and emotive.
Dr Wakefield, who worked at the Royal Free Hospital, in north London, when the paper was published, denied last night that the authors of the report had any knowledge that one child investigated for the study reported in the Lancet had a legal aid certificate at the time.
Investigations as a result of allegations made to the Lancet in the past few days suggest that as many as four of the 12 reported cases may have been on a list of 10 children on whom Dr Wakefield was commissioned by a solicitor to make studies. The exact number has still to be confirmed.
The two studies were completely separate and money from the Legal Aid Board was paid into a special research account administered by the hospital trust.
Dr Wakefield said: “Whether parents perceived an association with MMR vaccine or not, whether parents had approached lawyers with an intent to seek legal redress, or whether children were in receipt of legal funding or not, had no bearing whatsoever on their selection for clinical investigation of inclusion in the Lancet report.”
The paper in fact did not claim to prove a link between the MMR vaccination and autism, although Dr Wakefield said at its launch that he thought parents might be advised to give the jabs separately.
Mr Horton refused to reveal last night who had made six serious allegations of research misconduct. Three were not accepted.
“We regret that aspects of funding for parallel and related work and the existence of ongoing litigation that had been known during clinical evaluation of the children reported in the 1998 Lancet paper were not disclosed to editors.
“We judge that all this information would have been material to our decision-making about the paper’s suitability, credibility and validity for publication.”
The Lancet would publish an editorial commentary and statements from researchers involved in the 1998 study “as soon as possible”.
Mr Horton underlined how seriously he viewed the case. “In my view, not to disclose such a serious conflict of interest was an important error of judgement and conflicted with our guidelines on conflict of interest at the time.
“It is always very difficult with hindsight, but if we had known Dr Wakefield was not only lead investigator in the Lancet paper but also had been commissioned by the Legal Advisory Board, I am sure our view would have been this was a fatal conflict of interest and we would not have published the paper.”
Dr Wakefield’s co-authors have become increasingly critical, saying they believe in the safety of the MMR. Dr Simon Murch and colleagues have continued to research links between inflammation of the gut and autism and believe there is evidence of an association.
