[troutman]

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3660

In my not-so-humble opinion, the very kindest thing that can be said about Andrew Wakefield is that he is utterly incompetent as a scientist. After all, it’s been proven time and time again that his unethical and scientifically incompetent “study” that was published in The Lancet in 1999 claiming to find a correlation between vaccination with MMR and autistic regression in autistic children with bowel symptoms was at best dubious science and at worst fraudulent.

Vaccination rates plummeted in the UK, and measles, a disease once thought to be under control, has surged back and become endemic again. It is a feat that Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey appear to be trying to replicate right here in the U.S. with their wonderfully Orwellian-named Green Our Vaccines activism and ceaselesspromotion of anti-vaccine messages.

When it comes to the science, there is no doubt. No reputable scientist has been able to replicate Wakefield’s findings, and there is a remarkable convergence and agreement of findings of major studies looking for a correlation between MMR vaccination and autism: There ain’t one. Indeed, closing out 2009 was the publication of yet another study that failed to find any correlation between MMR and autism, or, as I put it at the time, yet another nail in the coffin of the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Andrew Wakefield’s repeated claims that the MMR can cause or “trigger” autism in some children is deader than dead as a scientific hypothesis and without a basis in scientific or clinical evidence.

The General Medical Council ruled he had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in doing his research.

In reaching its decision, the Panel notes that the project reported in the Lancet paper was established with the purpose to investigate a postulated new syndrome and yet the Lancet paper did not describe this fact at all. Because you drafted and wrote the final version of the paper, and omitted correct information about the purpose of the study or the patient population, the Panel is satisfied that your conduct was irresponsible and dishonest.