THE author of the 1998 study that linked autism to a vaccine has hit back at claims it was an “elaborate fraud”, saying he is a victim of a smear campaign by drug manufacturers.
In an interview with CNN, Andrew Wakefield denied inventing data and blasted a reporter who apparently uncovered the falsifications as a “hit man” doing the bidding of a powerful pharmaceutical industry.
“It’s a ruthless pragmatic attempt to crush any investigation into valid vaccine safety concerns,” Wakefield said.
He insisted the “truth” was in his book about the scandal: “The book is not a lie, the study is not a lie…I did not make up the diagnoses of autism.”
Blamed for a disastrous boycott of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in Britain, the study was retracted by The Lancet last year and Wakefield was disgraced on the grounds of conflict of financial interest and unethical treatment of some children involved in the research.
Yesterday the British Medical Journal declared the study an “elaborate fraud”.
Wakefield, in 1998 a consultant in experimental gastroenterology at London’s Royal Free Hospital, and his team suggested they had found a “new syndrome” of autism and bowel disease among 12 children.
They linked it to the MMR vaccine, which they said had been administered to eight of the youngsters shortly before the symptoms emerged.
But other scientists swiftly cautioned the study was only among a tiny group, without a comparative “control” sample, and the dating of when symptoms surfaced was based on parental recall, which is notoriously unreliable.
Experts said the study’s results have never been replicated.
When asked why 10 of his co-authors retracted the interpretations of the study, Wakefield said: ” I’m afraid the pressure has been put on them to do so.”
“People get very, very frightened. You’re dealing with some very powerful interests here.”
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