The study that launched the anti-vaccination movement that has been partially blamed for an outbreak of measles that hit 15 U.S. states in the summer of 2008 has been officially retracted by “The Lancet” medical journal. This comes only days after the author of the study, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was banned from practicing in the U.K. due to the unsafe and unethical methods with which he went about his study.
“It has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation,” “The Lancet” said in a statement on its website. “We fully retract this paper from the published record.”
10 of the 13 authors who worked on Wakefield’s study have already renounced its conclusions, and “The Lancet” stated some time ago that it should probably have never published the paper.
Some of the allegations against Wakefield involve accusations that he did medically unnecessary, and painful, procedures on autistic children under his care without the required ethical approval from an institutional review board. Wakefield is also said to have taken blood samples from children at his son’s birthday party, paying them about $7.20 each, and used them in the study. There have also been allegations that Wakefield had a professional conflict of interest as he had often been paid by lawyers in autism cases to provide expert testimony that vaccines caused autism.
The paper in question doesn’t even state that study managed to prove a causal link between vaccines and autism. It says: “We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described.” But it goes on to tabulate parental allegations and adopts these allegations as fact for the purpose of calculating a temporal link between the vaccine being administered and the onset of autism symptoms.
If you choose not to vaccinate your children, be aware that some of the other popular counter measures, particularly “measles parties” in which children are exposed to measles in an effort to build up resistance, are considered dangerous and ineffective.
