How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixedArchived
The article, written by a journalist, reveals how the appearence of a link between MMR vaccination and autism was artificially manufactured.
Deer B. How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed. BMJ 2011; 342:c5347
The article, written by a journalist, reveals how the appearence of a link between MMR vaccination and autism was artificially manufactured. The original paper, written by Wakefield et al and published in the Lancet in 1998 (and retracted in 2010), consisted of a case series of 12 children.
This new article describes that cases were misreported and the records from the NHS could not be reconciled with what was published in the original Lancet article: 3 of the 9 children with regressive autism did not according to their medical records actually have autism; 5 of the 12 children had development concerns already before MMR vaccination; some children were reported to have experienced first behavioural symptoms within days of MMR, while the medical records documented these as starting months after vaccination, and in 9 cases unremarkable colonic histopathology results were changed to “non-specific colitis”. Patients were revealed to have been recruited through anti-MMR campaigners.