Andrew Wakefield is hardly a household name, but it should be. It is in medical circles. The British physician and researcher suggested a link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1998. Millions of parents took his work and comments to heart and worried about the safety of the vaccinations. Thousands refused to have their children vaccinated, exposing them and others to illnesses that are preventable. Trouble is, Dr. Wakefield's research and theories are bogus. Follow-up studies have failed to discover any tie between the vaccine and autism.
Medical research, indeed, all scientific research, is rarely perfect. Blind alleys and dead ends are common and it is easy, based on evidence at hand at a given moment, to reach the wrong conclusion. The essence of ethical research, though, is to retract false claims and update information when additional and more substantive data becomes available. Dr. Wakefield failed to do so. Such willful irresponsibility was and is reckless in the extreme.
In 2004, when nearly a dozen of Dr. Wakefield's original co-authors retracted the findings of his article making the link between autism and the vaccine, his response was shameful. Rather than agree, Dr. Wakefield continued to espouse the discredited theory. He eventually left Britain rather than address the validity of his claims and the serviceability of the scientific method. He's worked most recently at an alternative-medicine research facility in Texas. British medical officials, however, did not forget Dr. Wakefield.
They correctly launched an investigation into his research and his practices. Late last month, the results of that probe were announced. Dr. Wakefield's license was revoked and he can no longer practice medicine in Britain. Given the now-revealed shoddiness of his research and his cavalier view of medical and scientific ethics, that seems a reasonable decision.
Unfortunately, banning Dr. Wakefield from the practice of medicine and exposing his research as a sham will do little to ameliorate the damage he's done. He raised false hopes among parents understandably looking for an explanation or a cause for their child's autism.
In an age where every utterance seems to live forever on the Internet, his dangerous advocacy continues to find an audience and to prompt some parents to withhold vaccinations from their kids. It is difficult to fight back against repudiated research and those who champion it. There's an easy answer, though, for those who question the wisdom and safety of vaccinating children.
It's found in the millions of healthy kids who have received vaccinations and have been mercifully free of the pain and sometimes death once caused by mumps, measles, rubella and other illnesses for which vaccines are now available.