MMR: a sorry episode

Telegraph View: the purported link between the MMR jab and autism has caused parents unnecessary anguish

Dr Andrew Wakefield remained defiant yesterday, despite being censured by the General Medical Council (GMC) for the way he conducted his research into what would become one of the great scientific controversies of recent times – the purported link between the MMR vaccine, introduced to the UK in 1988, and bowel disease and autism.

Although no other researchers have produced evidence to back up this association, Dr Wakefield and his supporters are unwilling to accept that they might have been wrong. The publication of the research in The Lancet, a journal of great repute, added credibility to their findings, just as the refusal of the Blair family to say whether they had given their youngest child the MMR jab convinced many parents that something was being covered up. The upshot of this terrible state of affairs was that the number of children being vaccinated fell markedly, and the incidence of measles and mumps, both serious illnesses among young children, rose. Last year, there were nearly 1,100 measles cases in England and Wales, compared with 56 in 1998.

There must be a place for scepticism in science, or any other field: it is important for the prevailing orthodoxy to be challenged, because it is not always right. But it is not always wrong, either – and there is a developing hostility towards science, fuelled by half-truths and false arguments easily disseminated on the internet, which feed a suspicion that the truth is somehow always being deliberately hidden. A similar controversy has affected the debate around global warming. Yet Dr Wakefield appeared less a doughty, independent seeker after the truth than a partisan campaigner determined to advance his theory. It has been a sorry episode, which has caused much unnecessary anguish for parents across the country.