Royal Free's ethics committee chair says "we did not approve the investigations"

This page is research from an investigation by Brian Deer for The Sunday Times of London and the UK's Channel 4 Television into a campaign linking the MMR children's vaccine with autism. | Go to part I: The Lancet scandal | Go to part II: The Wakefield factor

The scare was launched from a research paper published in the Lancet on February 28 1998, which reported on 12 children. The paper, authored by Andrew Wakefield and 12 others, claimed: "Ethical approval and consent. Investigations were approved by the Ethical Practices Committee of the Royal Free Hospital NHS Trust, and parents gave informed consent."

But, following a letter from Professor Sir David Hull, then chairman of the British government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, to Arie Zuckerman, then dean of the medical school at the Royal Free hospital, Dr Michael Pegg, chair of the hospital's ethics committee, denied this statement. He said he had been assured by Walker-Smith that "children would have these investigations even if there were no trial". In fact, the research project had begun with a contract between Wakefield and a law firm