The Lancet retracted the MMR and autism paper

The Lancet issued a press release on Tuesday 2 February 2010 following the GMC's decision on the paper by Wakefield et al in 1998 stating that several elements of the paper are incorrect. "In particular, the claims in the original papaer that children were consecutively referred and that investigations were approved by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record."


The study, published in The Lancet, claimed 8 of the 12 children showed signs of autism within days of receiving the MMR vaccine. The lead author, Andrew Wakefield, suggested that there might be a link between the vacciantion and autism. Although it was a very small study with only 12 children, the findings had caused a massive drop in the uptake of the MMR vaccine and sparked panic over the MMR vaccine around the world.


In the same issue of The Lancet, a commentary " Vaccine adverse events: causal or incidental?" written by 2 American vaccine specialists was also published. They pointed out that Wakefield's paper lacked epidemiological evidence to support the causal association with MMR vaccine and warned that such claim would cause confusion and fear among the media and the public. Unfortunately their message was not picked up by the media and the general public had little access to research articles.


The GMC found that Wakefield had no ethical approval nor relevant qualifications to carry out the tests on children. He also failed to declare that he had received money from a law firm representing the parents to carry out the research. Questions were raised on how Wakefield's research was scrutinised by the Royal Free and UCL Medical School where he worked at the time. A subsequent investigation by The Royal Free Hospital in 2004 reported that Wakefield's work on children was "appropriate". However, The Lancet issued a partial retraction of the interpretation from 10 of the 12 authors except Wakefield and one other author. See "The lessons of MMR" The Lancet, 363, 6 March 2004, pp 747–749 ( full text via Athens)

Some critics say the Lancet retraction is a bit too late while others say that the retraction will not change the situation as the MMR-autism debate continues.

See also: "The Lancet retracts controversial MMR research paper". Independent ,2 February 2010