Andrew Wakefield found to have Acted Unethically in Autism Study
With a high prevalence of autism in Oregon many parents are desperate to find a cause and a cure. While the science has been unable to find either many other people and companies are attempting to find out what is going on behind the development of the Autistic Spectrum Disorder. One such person has been Andrew Wakefield.
Wakefield is a British-born, Canadian-trained physician who has done a number of studies on the alleged link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR). Wakefield was the lead author of a 1998 study, published in The Lancet, which sparked a large amount of media coverage.
This study claimed to have found an associate between finding the measles virus in the intestinal tract of children with autism following the MMR vaccine. The study was small, with only 12 children, and the conclusions did not specifically suggest a link. This is where the media coverage came in and raised an alarm and scared many parents out of vaccinating their children.
This original study sparked much in the way of follow up research leading up to a recent study which also found no link between the MMR, measles virus, and autism. Since the studies appearance in The Lancet 10 of the 13 authors renounced the study and The Lancet has said that the study should not have been published. The original study also ended up sparking many accusations of Wakefield and led to an investigation for ethics violations.
These claims included accusations that Wakefield paid children at his child’s birthday party to participate in the study and that he faked some of the data in the original paper. Another conflict also came to the surface when the investigative journalist Brian Deer looked into Wakefield. Deer found that Wakefield had applied for a patent on an alternative MMR vaccine and that Wakefield was being paid specifically to support the MMR and autism link. These last two findings are huge conflicts of interest and were all taken into consideration by the General Medical Council in the investigation.
This investigation recently culminated yesterday, January 28, 2010, with a ruling by the General Medical Council in the U.K. which said that Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” during his research. The Council also said that Wakefield had behaved with “callous disregard for the distress and pain the children might suffer.” The sanctions that will result from these findings are still forthcoming and should be resolved in the next few months.
Studies like Wakefield’s lead parents who are frantically searching for a cause and a cure for autism much distress. Wakefield’s study was held up by the anti-vaccination movement as proof that vaccination cause’s autism, which the research has shown is very much so not true. Despite the condemnation by the Council and the overturning of his findings Wakefield has not let up and still is respected by groups like Age of Autism which parrot the claim laid down in The Lancet study.
Dr. Steven Novella of the Science-Based Medicine blog has an excellent website detailing the various studies on the autism-vaccine relationship.
Portland Science News ExaminerHalley DeLay