- KEY
ALLY OF MMR DOCTOR REJECTS AUTISM LINK
The
Sunday Times (London) March 7 2004
Brian
Deer
THE
campaign to discredit the MMR vaccine was in tatters
last night after a top research scientist who carried
out crucial tests for lawyers suing its manufacturers
revealed that he could find no link with autism.
Professor
John O’Leary, who did the tests for solicitors
representing the families of autistic children, said
his scientific findings “did not support the
MMR/autism hypothesis”.
He
also said he was “shocked” by the outcome
of a Sunday Times investigation into the activities
of Andrew Wakefield, the controversial doctor behind
the anti-MMR panic. O’Leary, of Trinity College
Dublin, had been seen as one of Wakefield’s
closest scientific collaborators.
“This
is very surprising,” said Professor Michael
Langman, chairman of the government’s joint
committee on vaccination and immunisation.
“O’Leary’s work was supposed to uphold
the hypothesis, although it was never reproducible by
others.”
Wakefield
had already suffered a blow last week when 10 of his
former colleagues retracted clinical research that
had suggested a possible link between the vaccine and
autism. A Sunday Times investigation led The Lancet,
which had published the research, to condemn it last
month as “fatally flawed”.
O’Leary
began research collaboration with Wakefield in 1999.
They were co-authors of a paper that appeared two
years ago in a scientific journal, Molecular
Pathology, detailing their search for evidence of the
measles virus in the gut of autistic children. In
early 2000, O’Leary also set up a “campus
company”, Unigenetics Ltd, to carry out
scientific tests for Alexander Harris, a firm of
solicitors representing parents seeking to sue three
vaccine manufacturers over the alleged links with
autism.
Wakefield
also carried out scientific work for some of the same
cases through the same solicitors. Wakefield was
allocated £55,000 for his work by the Legal Services
Commission in August 1996. According to the
commission, O’Leary’s company was
subsequently funded with up to £800,000 for its
tests. He “could not confirm” this amount
last week.
The
tests involved using sophisticated DNA-amplification
technology to hunt for fragments of the measles virus
in the gut and blood of autistic children. In a
letter sent to The Sunday Times through his
solicitors, O’Leary revealed: “The testing
continued until late 2003 and reports were provided
to Alexander Harris and to the UK court on our
findings. These did not support the MMR/autism
hypothesis.”
It is
understood that the tests found no difference in
blood taken from autistic children and those from
healthy “controls”. O’Leary added in
his letter that he had consistently advised parents
to use MMR.
Wakefield,
who with two other doctors is under investigation by
the General Medical Council over events at the Royal
Free hospital, London, was unavailable for comment.
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