The doctor who launched the modern anti-vaccine movement acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly,” Britain’s General Medical Council has ruled. But fear not. Dr. Andrew Wakefield is still a hero to his many acolytes. And others, with curious credentials, fight on to terrify parents into not getting their children inoculated.

In 1998, Wakefield wrote and then vociferously hawked an article in the British medical journal Lancet linking autism to the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella). After the council’s decision, Lancet this week retracted the article. Among the facts that have come out of the inquiry into Wakefield’s research is that two years before his paper appeared, lawyers seeking to sue vaccine makers paid Wakefield the equivalent of $700,000.

After Wakefield’s article appeared, vaccination levels plummeted in Britain and declined in the United States, and the diseases they prevented surged. Measles cases increased sevenfold in the U.S.

Read the full article at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fumento5-2010feb05,0,3589719.story

For more information:

Autism Findings Retracted
The New American, on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:54:18 -0800

Now the Journal says that the study was compromised due to researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s reputed unethical and “callous disregard” for the children used …

Hippocrates would puke: Doctor hoaxed parents into denying kids vaccine
New York Daily News, on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:16:56 -0800

British physician Dr. Andrew Wakefield has been branded a primary instigator of the mania that drove parents to avoid having their children undergo routine …

Recanting well and good, but damage already done
Winnipeg Free Press, on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:24:25 -0800

The paper, written by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and a train of lesser colleagues, purported to link the MMR vaccine to autism, which was then and still is on the …