Anti-MMR doctor is forced out
By Lorraine Fraser, Medical
Correspondent
(Filed: 02/12/2001)
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/02/nmmr02.xml
THE specialist who first raised concerns about the safety of MMR
vaccinations has been forced out of his job, The Telegraph can reveal.
Andrew Wakefield, a consultant gastroenterologist whose
research has linked the vaccine to autism and bowel disease in children, said last
night that he had been asked to resign because of his work.
"I have been asked to go because my research results are
unpopular," said Dr Wakefield, an academic at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School
in London whose research into the triple measles, mumps and rubella vaccination has caused
controversy.
"I did not wish to leave but I have agreed to stand down in the hope
that my going will take the political pressure off my colleagues and allow them to get on
with the job of looking after the many sick children we have seen.
"They have not sacked me. They cannot; I have not done anything
wrong. I have no intention of stopping my investigations."
He has been testing the theory that measles virus from MMR vaccine can
colonise the bowel of susceptible children, producing inflammatory bowel disease, which
then, via a disruption of the chemical balance in the body and the brain, leads to autism.
Although the specialist admits he has not published proof, he has
infuriated ministers by suggesting that the three component vaccines should be given
separately.
Dr Wakefield's departure comes a month after he was made a Fellow of the
Royal College of Pathologists in recognition of his research work.
He left his £50,000 job on Friday after 14 years having been told that
his ideas were "unwelcome" at University College London, which controls the
Royal Free.
The news will please vaccination programme officials in the Public Health
Laboratory Service. They have ridiculed his research and still insist that MMR,
recommended officially for every child at around 13 months and again at four years, is
safe.
He added last night: "I am very concerned that I have been unable to
gain any guarantee from the hospital that the children we have already seen, and who need
to be seen, will be looked after".
Parents of autistic children involved in his research expressed their
anger last night. Some demanded reassurances that the Royal Free Hospital will continue
treating their children.
Dr Wakefield's research has made him a pariah of the medical
establishment. As a result, the World Health Organisation felt obliged to announce its
support of the MMR vaccine.
The Government has played down concerns since he published a paper in The
Lancet in 1998, reporting that he and colleagues had identified a hitherto unknown combination
of bowel damage and autism in children whose parents said their previously normal
children fell ill after MMR.
The row became a crisis last January when Dr Wakefield told The Telegraph
that he
had seen almost 170 children with a similar story and claimed that the Department
of Health's contention that MMR had been proven to be safe did not "hold
up".
That number, has now reached almost 200. Pressure on the children's
gastroenterology unit is so great that it's waiting list risks breaking the NHS's 18-month
limit. Parents have appealed to Tony Blair to give it more funds.
The Royal Free Hospital Medical School was unavailable for comment last night.