Andrew Wakefield

Andrew Wakefield

Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born 1957) is a British former surgeon and medical researcher, known for scientific misconduct in a 1998 research paper in support of the now-discredited claim that there is a link between the administration of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the appearance of autism and bowel disease.

Four years after the publication of the paper, other researchers' results had still failed to reproduce Wakefield's findings or confirm his hypothesis of a relation between childhood gastrointestinal disorders and autism. A 2004 investigation by Sunday Times reporter Brian Deer identified undisclosed financial conflicts of interest on Wakefield's part, and most of his coauthors then withdrew their support for the study's interpretations. The British General Medical Council (GMC) conducted an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield and two former colleagues. The investigation centred on Deer's numerous findings, including one that autistic children were subjected to unnecessary invasive medical procedures, such as colonoscopy and lumbar puncture, and that Wakefield acted without the required ethical approval from an institutional review board.

On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children. The panel ruled that Wakefield had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted both against the interests of his patients, and "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his published research. The Lancet immediately and fully retracted his 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC’s findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified. Wakefield was struck off the Medical Register in May 2010, with a statement identifying dishonest falsification in the Lancet research, and is barred from practising medicine in the UK.

In January 2011, an editorial accompanying an article by Brian Deer in BMJ identified Wakefield's work as an "elaborate fraud". In a follow-up article, Deer said that Wakefield had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing". In November 2011, yet another report in BMJ revealed original raw data indicating that, contrary to Wakefield's claims in the Lancet, children in his research did not have inflammatory bowel disease.

Wakefield's study and public recommendations against the use of the combined MMR vaccine were linked to a steep decline in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom and a corresponding rise in measles cases, resulting in serious illness and fatalities. Wakefield has continued to defend his research and conclusions, saying there was no fraud, hoax or profit motive.