In a long-overdue move, British medical journal The Lancet has retracted a paper by Andrew Wakefield on links between the MMR vaccine and Autism:
The Lancet medical journal formally retracted a paper on Tuesday that caused a 12-year international battle over links between the three-in-one childhood MMR vaccine and autism.
The paper, published in 1998 and written by British doctor Andrew Wakefield, suggested the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot might be linked to autism and bowel disease.
His assertion, since widely discredited, caused one of the biggest medical rows in a generation and led to a steep drop in the number of vaccinations in the United States, Britain and other parts of Europe, prompting a rise in cases of measles.
The knock-on effect of parents avoiding getting their children vaccinated creates opportunities for much more serious outbreaks of these diseases. Dr. Wakefield’s “research” has been harmful to the population at large for helping to create and exacerbate parents’ fears for their children, and in encouraging them to take the greater risk of not getting the MMR (and, in many cases, other vaccinations) for their kids.
