Medical Journal Officially Retracts Report Linking Autism, Childhood Immunizations

The longstanding, and erroneous, contention the childhood immunizations are in some way related to autism was dealt its death blow Tuesday when the British medical journal Lancet anounced that it was formally retracting the 1998 report that first suggested a possible relationship between the two.

In medical literature, retracting a previously published report or study is considered the "death penalty" of medical research and an acknowledgement that the original research contained critical flaws in its methodology or that a further review of the original data has raised concern that the data was manipulated to demonstrate a relationship that, in actuality, did not exist.

The Lancet's retraction came less than a week after a decision by Great Britain's General Medical Council that the original study's lead author and investigator, Andrew Wakefield, had intentionally manipulated his research data in order to demonstrate a relationship between routine childhood immunizations and autism.

The General Medical Council's report also stated that it had found that Wakefield ordered unnecessary diagnostic tests, failed to act "in the best interests" of the children under his care, had misused public funds during his original study, and had unethically failed to disclose that he was acting as a paid consultant to law firms that were pursuing lawsuits against vaccine manufacturing companies.

According to UK Health Protection Agency, which sponsors and oversees public health programs in Britain, childhood immunization rates fell to only 80% in the years following the report

Under Great Britain's administrative law practices, the General Medical Council is responsible for licensing physicians and setting standards of medical practice. The Council also disclosed that it was conducting a "fitness to practice" medicine investigation of Wakefield, which could result in the suspension or revocation of his medical license.

Wakefield's original report described a series of 12 patients under the age of 10 who had allegedly developed both bowel disease and developmental disorders following measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination. However, a second study published in "Lancet" in 2004 was unable to reproduce Wakefield's findings in a larger group of autistic children, which prompted 10 of the 12 researchers whose names had appeared as co-investigators on Wakefield's to publish a retraction in "Lancet" and ask that their names be removed from his report.

In the United States, Wakefield's report prompted a comprehensive review of MMR vaccines by both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. The results of that review, also published in 2004, found that there was no evidence to support Wakefield's contention.

Although Wakefield's report prompted dozens of lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry, all such actions were either dismissed for lack of merit or by decision of a trial jury.