Science Media Centre

The British Medical Journal has described Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study, in which the MMR vaccine was linked to autism, as an ‘elaborate fraud’. An editorial in the journal stated that the results of his experiment were not simply a product of mistake,  and that his ‘misreporting was gross’.  It is thought that his motivation may [...]

Lancet kills MMR paper 10 years on The move by London-based medical journal The Lancet to retract a ten year old paper that suggested a potential link between the MMR vaccine and autism in children effectively ends one of the longest running medical controversies of recent decades. The retraction from The Lancet editor Richard Horton [...]

3 News covers the formal retraction by prestigious journal The Lancet of Andrew Wakefield’s controversial paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. There are still concerns, however, that even this step will not convince parents that the vaccine is safe. (See video here)

Prestigious medical journal The Lancet has formally retracted the paper in which Andrew Wakefield, the doctor behind claims that the MMR vaccine can be linked to autism, first claimed such effects. The MMR, or measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, came under scrutiny in the late 1990s when Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor, wrote a paper [...]

The UK’s General Medical Council has ruled that Andrew Wakefield, the doctor behind claims that the MMR vaccine can be linked to autism, was “dishonest, irresponsible and showed callous disregard for the distress and pain” in the work he carried out. The ruling can be read in full here. The UK Science Media Centre rounded [...]

Slate Magazine in the USA has this month criticised Oprah Winfrey for providing a prominent platform for actress and vaccine sceptic Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy has been a frequent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show and elsewhere where she claims that vaccines caused her son to be autistic and that children get too many vaccines too [...]