Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who kick-started the MMR vaccine controversy, has been found guilty of ‘serious professional misconduct’ and is to be struck off the medical register by a General Medical Council panel.
“The panel concluded that it is the only sanction that is appropriate to protect patients and is in the wider public interest, including the maintenance of public trust and confidence in the profession and is proportionate to the serious and wide-ranging findings made against him,” says a ruling from the fitness to practise established by the doctors’ regulator.
A paper co-authored by Wakefield in the Lancet back in 1998 sparked a huge health scare over the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella ‘triple vaccine’ that has continued to this day. Although numerous pieces of research have found no link between the vaccine and autism, suspicion persists and has lead to a decrease in use of the vaccine and an increase in the diseases it prevents.
Wakefield was previously branded “dishonest and misleading” by a GMC panel, but the second ruling was necessary to determine whether his behaviour amounted to serious professional misconduct. Today’s ruling was that his actions did make him guilty of that charge.
“Dr Wakefield has demonstrated a persistent lack of insight and has insisted in many instances on his ethical propriety,” says the panel ruling, “in the context of the referral process and the treatment of the children in the research project in which he was engaged; in the context of the funding of the project; with regard to the terminology of the Lancet paper; with regard to his non-declaration of interests; with regard to not acting in the best clinical interests of the Lancet children and with regard to obtaining blood from children at a birthday party.”
Wakefield himself surfaced this morning in a rare interview with the BBC. He blamed the UK government for blocking the use of alternative individual vaccines for the three diseases.
“It is the government, entirely the government, that is responsible for the resurgence of measles,” Wakefield told the Radio 4 Today programme. “I did not at any stage say parents should not vaccinate.”
He added, “I never made the claim at the time nor do I still make the claim that I have the proof that MMR is a cause of autism.”
If he does not appeal, his name will be removed from the medical register in 28 days. Given most of his work is carried out in the US, this may not have a huge impact on him.
Wakefield’s former colleague John Walker-Smith was also found guilty of serious professional misconduct and his name will be erased from the medical register. Simon Murch was found not guilty of serious professional misconduct.
“The false suggestion of a link between autism and the MMR vaccine has done untold damage to the UK vaccination programme,” said Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, in a statement. “We cannot stress too strongly that all children and young people should have the MMR vaccine. Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that it is safe.”