Dr Richard Horton
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[2009 Jan] Secret British MMR Vaccine Files Forced Open By Legal Action

[2008 Dec] Age of Autism Awards 2008 Galileo Award: Dr. Andrew Wakefield By Mark Blaxill

[2008 Dec] Smoke and Mirrors: Dr Richard Horton and the Wakefield Affair By John Stone

[2008 Nov] The Big Question by Martin J Walker MA

Conflicts of Integrity by Martin Walker

[April 2008] Lies Exposed At The UK MMR Vaccine Trial Court By Jane Bryant

[JABS Briefing Note 9TH April 2008] GMC’s disciplinary hearing into Dr Andrew Wakefield, Professor Simon Murch and Professor John Walker-Smith

Last Day of Reckoning by Martin Walker MA

[April 2008] MMR/AUTISM & THE TAMING OF THE BRITISH MEDIA

See: Wakefield GMC Hearing 2007

Quotes re Horton:
When the final decision came at the GMC, principally that there wasn't ethical committee approval for this study then, Dr. Horton decided to completely retract the paper even though it was a clinical case series that did not need ethical approval for the test that were done clinically. Again, totally illogical but allowed Dr. Horton to put further clear blue water between him and this paper and there is no doubt by his own admission in his various books he had been the subject of severe criticism for publishing this paper in the first place. So he was able to gain some redemption by removing the paper from the written record. [2010 April] Andrew Wakefield Interview by Dr Mercola

Count I alleges that Dr. Horton knew of Dr. Wakefield’s participation the UK MMR litigation, did not consider it a disclosable interest, and hid this knowledge from Lancet readers in 1998.   Dr. Horton’s claim six years after publication of the Lancet Case Series that it would never have been published had he known of Wakefield’s participation in MMR litigation was false because he was twice informed of Dr. Wakefield’s relationship with MMR litigation a year before and five days after publication.  Horton, not Dr. Wakefield, decided that the disclosure of a "perceived" conflict (where no actual conflict existed) was simply not necessary as part of the published Case Series.  He concealed the Lancet's knowledge of Dr. Wakefield’s participation in MMR litigation when the possibility of “litigation bias” was raised by a reader immediately after publication.  Attachment 1 is a side-by-side comparison of the letters received by Horton four days after publication, and the redacted version published in May, 2008.  By feigning ignorance of the Wakefield litigation relationship, and outrage at somehow being misled, six years later when the allegations were raised by Deer, Horton was able to shift “blame” for decisions he had made and information he had concealed to a scapegoat (i.e. Drs. Wakefield, .Murch, and Walker Smith) once it had become evident that someone had to pay a price for the “unpleasantness” surrounding vaccine safety concerns.  Moreover, Horton conspired with a “medical regulator” to motivate a GMC investigation while boasting that the GMC “had not a clue where to begin.”
    Count II alleges that Dr. Horton’s informal “gag” rule barring publication of material critical of vaccine safety breaches his professional duty as Editor of the Lancet to support scientific freedom and freedom of inquiry and avoid censoring material that might be “politically” unpopular or critical of industry.  Dr. Horton’s de facto “gag” rule censoring publication of science that calls vaccine safety into question obstructs justice by depriving the courts of the evidence they would need to find a vaccine caused injury and is an unprofessional and misguided attack on the ethics of scientists and lawyers who would work together to seek justice for injured children. [2010 Jan] False Testimony Denies Lancet Doctors a Fair Hearing

....In the days leading up to Deer’s initial "revelations" about Andrew Wakefield and others in The Sunday Times in February 2004, a meeting took place between Deer and Horton in which Deer made a number of claims. These all centered on a paper written by Dr. Wakefield and colleagues, which was published in The Lancet in 1998. In the now notorious paper, Wakefield et al. had reported on a possibly novel form of bowel disease, with autistic-like developmental regression, in 12 children referred to the gastrointestinal department of London’s Royal Free Hospital. Eight of the children, according to their parents or general practitioner, had the onset of developmental regression soon after their MMR vaccine. 
    Despite what is usually inaccurately reported in summary, the paper actually concluded that: "We did not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described … further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to the vaccine."
    In the February 2004 meeting, the major issues of relevance to Dr. Horton were three specific claims made by Deer. First, he claimed that The Lancet study was funded by Legal Aid money. Second, he claimed that the children reported in The Lancet were sourced by lawyers. Third, and perhaps most crucially, Deer claimed that Dr. Wakefield had hidden his involvement with Dawbarns, the firm of lawyers involved in the MMR litigation, from The Lancet and Dr. Horton. 
    On hearing these claims from Deer, Horton was apparently horrified, and within hours of the meeting he stated publicly that the 1998 paper was "fatally flawed." He further claimed that had The Lancet been aware of Wakefield’s involvement with Dawbarns at that time the paper would never have been published. This statement about the "fatally flawed" paper was, therefore, the seed of the "discredited" myth that prevails and is clearly influencing many more people today.
    Let’s fast forward to the GMC hearing, which has been investigating these claims for nearly three years. What do we find? First, it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that The Lancet study was not funded by Legal Aid. Not one penny of Legal Aid money was used for the study. Second, it has been shown that the children in the study were not sourced by lawyers. None of the children reported in The Lancet study were involved in any legal action at the time of their referral to the Royal Free Hospital. Third, we now know that The Lancet had been told, in communications between Dawbarns and Horton, about Dr. Wakefield’s involvement with them in April 1997. So, they knew. A whole year before the paper was published, they knew.  [2010 Jan] Polly Tommey of Autism File Magazine on "Discredited Defamation of Dr. Andrew Wakefield"

Contrary to Lancet Editor Dr Richard Horton's evidence to the GMC was that he did not know of Wakefield's paid involvement in the MMR litigation, Horton had detailed correspondence in 1997 disclosing that involvement  The correspondence was with Richard Barr, the solicitor who was working on the MMR litigation with Wakefield to help all those seriously injured British children..  This correspondence was considerably in advance of Horton's February 1998 publication in The Lancet of the Royal Free's paper containing the interpretation that MMR vaccine is associated with autism cases involving inflammatory bowel disease......the CEO of the owners of Richard Horton's "The Lancet", Crispin Davis, was appointed to the MMR litigation Defendants' parent company GlaxoSmithKline's board of directors in July 2003 [April 2008] MMR/AUTISM & THE TAMING OF THE BRITISH MEDIA

How bizarre it is that Horton chose to focus his undermining of Wakefield on the matter of conflict of interests, when his immediate online manager is a director of the GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of the MMR vaccine that Wakefield has cited as causing adverse reactions in children! Conflicts of Integrity by Martin Walker

(L to R) Dr Phil Hammond; Dr Richard Horton, editor The Lancet; Kate Lloyd, Medical Director, Pfizer UK