Vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud' - medical journal

The number of children receiving the MMR vaccine dropped markedly in the years following the controversial paper's publication. File photo / Rotorua Daily Post

A 1998 British study which led to parents around the world refusing to vaccinate their children for fear it could cause autism was an "elaborate fraud", according to the British Medical Journal.

The research paper, published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr Andrew Wakefield and colleagues, linked the measles, mumps and rubella immunisation with autism and bowel disease among 12 children.

While the research has been long discredited by others in the medical profession for a having no comparative control group, the small size of the sample and the lack of follow-up research supporting the findings, many parents have opted not to vaccinate their child as a result of its findings.

Further than reject the research's findings, reporter Brian Deer has accused Dr Wakefield of altering the patients' medical histories in order to support his claim to have identified a new syndrome.

Mr Deer found some of the autistic children had been selected by an anti-vaccine campaign group, who he said had funded and commissioned the research ahead of planned litigation.

"Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were "previously normal," five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns," Mr Deer wrote in the British Medical Journal. "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."

In an editorial in the journal, blame for the research's flaws were placed at Dr Wakefield's feet.

"Is it possible that he was wrong, but not dishonest: that he was so incompetent that he was unable to fairly describe the project, or to report even one of the 12 children's cases accurately? No. 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.

"There are hard lessons for many in this highly damaging saga."

New Zealand Paediatric Society president Dr Rosemary Marks told Newstalk ZB Dr Wakefield clearly had an agenda from the start.

"When you look at the very careful documentation that has been done of exactly what happened, a lot of the information about the money he'd received and so on was not made known to his co-workers," she said.

In February last year, The Lancet finally withdrew the paper after a preliminary verdict by a panel from Britain's General Medical Council that Dr Wakefield and two of his co-authors had acted "dishonestly" and "irresponsibly".

Dr Wakefield was last year barred from medical practice by the General Medical Council, not for the distorted findings of the research, but for violating a number of ethical practices during the study.

While the British government and the World Health Organisation have maintained the vaccination is safe, the research resulted in a drop in children receiving their MMR shots. In Britain 92 per cent of children got their jabs in 1995, but in 2003-04 only 80 per cent were immunised. In 2008, for the first time in 14 years, measles was declared endemic in England and Wales, the British Medical Journal reported.

Parents around the world have taken the research's findings on board, including US President Barack Obama and senator John McCain ahead of the 2008 presidential election.

"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it," Mr Obama said.

Children in New Zealand should receive two doses of the MMR vaccination, at 15 months and four years of age. Last year an outbreak of measles which began in Christchurch in June resulted in the hospitalisation of five children, all of which recovered.

- NZ HERALD STAFF