| It does not take a significant amount of research to determine the above characterization of Wakefield's actions are, at best naively optimistic about either his competency, his ethics, or both. The publicly available and extensively detailed [1] findings of the review board that rescinded his license show with little room for interpretation an impressive list of conflicts of interest, improper treatment of patients, poorly conducted research, and fraudulent activities. Also extensively researched was the journalism efforts of Brian Deer [2], which uncovered an impressive level of data fraud. His work is worth reading, but in the interest of brevity I will quote the abbreviated synopsis found in Mr. Wakefield's wikipedia entry [3]: The paper in The Lancet was a case series of 12 child patients; it reported a proposed "new syndrome" of enterocolitis and regressive autism and associated this with MMR as an "apparent precipitating event." But in fact: 1. Three of nine children reported with regressive autism did not have autism diagnosed at all. Only one child clearly had regressive autism; 2. Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were "previously normal", five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns; 3. Some children were reported to have experienced first behavioural symptoms within days of MMR, but the records documented these as starting some months after vaccination; 4. In nine cases, unremarkable colonic histopathology results—noting no or minimal fluctuations in inflammatory cell populations—were changed after a medical school "research review" to "non-specific colitis"; 5. The parents of eight children were reported as blaming MMR, but 11 families made this allegation at the hospital. The exclusion of three allegations—all giving times to onset of problems in months—helped to create the appearance of a 14 day temporal link; [1] http://briandeer.com/solved/gmc-charge-sheet.pdf [2] http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield |