Andrew Wake­field and his sup­port­ers (Image from deplet​ed​cra​nium​.com)

Last week brought news (but, it should be noted, not “new” news) that the British Med­ical Jour­nal is about to pub­lish an arti­cle by jour­nal­ist Brian Deer impli­cat­ing defrocked British physi­cian Andrew Wake­field in out­right fraud related to his alle­ga­tions of a link between vac­ci­na­tions and autism.

In 1999, Wake­field and co-​​authors pub­lished a study in the pres­ti­gious British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet which claimed a strong asso­ci­a­tion between the use of com­bined mumps-​​measles-​​rubella (MMR) vac­cine and autism.

Given the inci­dence of autism-​​spectrum dis­or­ders, which now approaches 1% in the U.S., and the emo­tional pain inflicted on autism suf­fer­ers and their “neuro-​​typical” fam­ily mem­bers, it’s obvi­ously of keen inter­est to the med­ical com­mu­nity and the pub­lic at large to get to the bot­tom of the cur­rent upswing in diag­nosed autism cases. Wakefield’s arti­cle gen­er­ated a huge amount of interest.

Prob­lem is, it’s all lies. (more…)