The Lancet retracts paper linking MMR vaccines and autism.
Important news for anyone who cares about our public health – shortly after the British General Medical Council concluded its ethics investigation of doctor Andrew Wakefield, the medical journal The Lancet formally retracted his controversial 1998 paper that purported to show a link between the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) and autism. Ars Technica gives a detailed take at the link above, though the news has been featured in most large news outlets.
Not only has the paper been in disrepute for a while, with partial retraction and 9 out of the 11 original authors removing their names from the paper, but the data has been conclusively disproved, with scientists even repeating the original research and finding no link. Now there’s further evidence that quite apart from the research being unscientific and the conclusions being unsupported, it was seemingly unethical in a number of ways regarding how children were recruited, and the treatments some of them were subjected to. Wakefield was also being funded by a legal team suing vaccine manufacturers and having himself applied for a patent for a new measles vaccine. All-round a sordid affair.
Unfortunately the paper already has had lasting effect in starting an anti-vaccine furor based on its results, and increasing the number of people refusing to get their children vaccinated. Sadly, because it doesn’t take that many unvaccinated people to lose our herd immunity, diseases like measles have made a resurgence.
This retraction probably isn’t going to change the minds of those who believe vaccines cause autism despite any scientific evidence for it. But hopefully it conclusively removes the main shred of ‘scientific evidence’ behind the arguments, and can help prevent more people from refusing vaccinations for their kids.
Via Ars Technica