“There is no one who knows a child better than her mother. And I read the other day an anecdotal story of a patient who had died from exposure to measles,” he continues, stabbing the air with a ringless left hand. “An anecdote. And that anecdote made the news. But your anecdotes are irrelevant, apparently. Your hundreds, your thousands, your tens of thousands, your millions of anecdotes about what happened to your children." Parents’ anecdotes. Vaccine damage stories. They had long been his faithful standby. Study after study, after study, after study, had reported no link between vaccination and the numbers of children diagnosed with autism. Massive class actions had come and gone. And yet there remained these reports of injuries —recollections, assumptions, even some deceptions —much as there were when Newsnight’s woman in scarlet had sent him his sentinel case.¹

In the February 28, 1998 edition of the British medical journal The Lancet, Andrew Wakefield, a British pediatric gastroenterologist, as principle discussant, published what colleagues at the time referred to as an "innocuous, obscure study" titled, "Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children."² Based on Dr. Wakefield's clinical assessment of twelve children, "neurological abnormalities on clinical examination; MRI scans, EEGs, and cerebrospinal-fluid profiles were normal; and fragile X was negative. Prospective developmental records showed satisfactory achievement of early milestones in all children." ³ What was notable to Dr. Wakefield was the conclusion that, "In eight children, the onset of behavioural problems had been linked, either by the parents or by the child’s physician, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination." as described:

And Wakfield continues, "We describe a pattern of colitis and ileal-lymphoid- nodular hyperplasia in children with developmental disorders. Intestinal and behavioural pathologies may have occurred together by chance, reflecting a selection bias in a self-referred group; however, the uniformity of the intestinal pathological changes and the fact that previous studies have found intestinal dysfunction in children with autistic-spectrum disorders, suggests that the connection is real and reflects a unique disease process."⁴ It is critically important to bear in mind that neither Wakefield, nor any member of his team, was a child psychiatrist, psychologist, behavioralist, or a trained mental health professional; the sample was astonishingly small - Wakefield drew conclusions based on observations related to eight of the twelve subject children enrolled in the study; Wakefield did not discriminate for the fact that, at the time, 90% of children in the UK were vaccinated with the MMR vaccine, which obviously included infants & children that would go on to develop Autism Spectrum Disorder - including the eight in his study - and Wakefield should have studied Autism in an unvaccinated control group, but did not; and Wakefield was later found to have not disclosed major financial misconduct (even to his team members), and for fraud and misrepresentation of data.^5,6

Wakefield followed with a second study in 2002, which was equally flawed scientifically, including a rather dramatic decision to defy a manufacturer's warning regarding interpretation of data from a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) machine that quickly replicates genetic material for examination, that predictably rendered false positive results upon which Wakefield relied.⁷ Virologist present alleged the results as, "wholly inappropriate” and “entirely unreliable”; methods that “lack of judgment,” “inadequate controls,” and complained of “spurious false positives” from the machine.⁸ In the end, Wakefield was left in court to simply state that, in each case of a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, "It is denied that sequencing is necessary," or "Sequencing is unnecessary." Brian Deer, a reporter for the Sunday Times of London, and a direct observer, concludes his observations and this this remarkable story with the observation:

For these children, the claim was that the vaccine virus in MMR was the ultimate culprit for their autism. But doctors and scientists, supervised by lawyers, able and equipped to fingerprint the suspect—and so maybe save humanity from a repeat offender—had considered this, and chosen not to do it.

Later, in 2004, ten of twelve members of Wakefield's original team wrote a retraction of the interpretation of the original data stating, "no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient."⁹ In 2010, a full twelve years following its publication, The Lancet, in a one-paragraph, anonymous statement, retracted the study:

Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al. are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. In particular, the claims in the original paper 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.¹⁰

Now, one would have presumed this was the end of the medical career of Andrew Wakefield, who lost his license to practice medicine in the UK, but he has emerged in the US - specifically in Texas - and is a prominent anti-vaxer with a considerable body of "fans" and well-wishers, even as he continues to excoriate Brian Deer, who fully and factually reported on this situation:

DR. ANDREW WAKEFIELD WAS RIGHT. BRIAN DEER IS THE LIAR. THERE WAS NO FRAUD. NO HOAX. HERE’S PROOF. Parent from THE LANCET case series also complains to BMJ about Deer lies STATEMENT FROM DR. ANDREW WAKEFIELD I am accused of altering the clinical histories and test results in autistic children in order to manufacture a disease – a disease described in The Lancet in 1998 that Brian Deer says does not exist... DEER MISREPRESENTED HIMSELF TO LANCET CASE SERIES FAMILY It has been revealed in a letter to THE SUNDAY TIMES that Brian Deer lied to a parent whose child was in THE LANCET case series in order to obtain information from her about her child and his health records. Mr. Deer “entered her home under a false name” and “claimed to be a health correspondent of THE SUNDAY TIMES.” Mr. Deer was not on the staff of THE SUNDAY TIMES.

It seems to us that this "newly surfaced document," which Wakefield claims is dated December 20th 1996, from a man already known for data fraud and whose research associates had withdrawn their original support over his "lack of judgement," and "inappropriateness," and were said to be furious over his financial non-disclosure, and others concluded, "The Wakefield fraud is likely to go down as one of the most serious frauds in medical history¹¹, is not the victim:

Appallingly, parents across the world did not vaccinate their children out of fear of the risk of autism, thereby exposing their children to the risks of disease and the well-documented complications related thereto. Measles outbreaks in the UK in 2008 and 2009 as well as pockets of measles in the USA and Canada were attributed to the nonvaccination of children.¹²

Apparently, Andrew Wakefield would rather focus on the soft target of Brian Deer, rather than admit his responsibility, thereby causing direct harm to children, feeding a spurious and exceptionally dangerous movement, and furthering the ongoing lack of faith in scientific/medical institutions and experts entrusted with promoting & fostering our and our children's health.

¹ Deer, Brian. The Doctor Who Fooled the World, p. 289.

² Wakefield, AJ, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Lancet, Vol 351 • February 28, 1998.

³ Ibid. p.638.

⁴ Ibid. p.639.

⁵ Vaccines and Autism | Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccines-and-other-conditions/autism

⁶ Deer, Brian. The Doctor Who Fooled the World, p. 156.

⁷ Deer, Brian. Ibid., p. 178 ff - Deer, who was a reporter for the Sunday Times of London and a firsthand witness to much of these investigations, makes a very dramatic chronical of the PCR studies and flawed results of Wakefields samples conducted for the civil litigation brought by families against the manufacturers of the MMR vaccines in the UK and the US. He was provided full documemtation for the ABI Prism 7700 DNA amplifier, and quickly made note of the warning, "For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures," as Wakefields lawyers pushed for amplification repetitions twice beyond the "false positive" expectations.

⁸ Ibid. p.180.

⁹ Murch SH, Anthony A, Casson DH, Malik M, Berelowitz M, Dhillon AP, Thomson MA, Valentine A, Davies SE, Walker-Smith JA. Retraction of an interpretation. The Lancet. 2004 Mar 6;363(9411):750. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)15715-2. PMID: 15016483.

¹⁰ Retraction: Ileal lymphoid nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Editors of The Lancet, The Lancet, Volume 375, Issue 9713, 445.

¹¹ Godlee F. The fraud behind the MMR scare. BMJ. 2011;342:d22.

¹² Eggertson L. Lancet retracts 12-year-old article linking autism to MMR vaccines. CMAJ. 2010 Mar 9;182(4):E199-200. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.109-3179. Epub 2010 Feb 8. PMID: 20142376; PMCID: PMC2831678.