Science Media Centre

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)

TVNZ’s flagship current affairs programme Close Up led its 2 Feb broadcast with an extended segment on the Gardasil HPV vaccine and one New Zealand woman’s claim that her daughter’s death is linked to the vaccine. An excerpt from Close Up’s intro to Gardasil: Are we getting the full picture?: “It is supposed to save [...]

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 [...]

More funding for immunisation in New Zealand could have a significant effect, possibly eliminating measles and substantially reducing the incidence of other diseases, says a local expert. Dr Nikki Turner, director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre at Auckland University, says the government subsidies need to be heightened to ensure that medical practices have the ability [...]

What is immunisation? Immunisation is a way of preventing infectious diseases through the use of vaccines. How does the immune system fight infection? When a pathogen (such as a bacterium or virus) enters the body, the immune system recognises that the pathogen is foreign and prepares to fight the intruding organism using antibodies. If the [...]