Wakefield misled top UK medical research hearing over where he got MMR children

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

Following publication of the MMR-autism claims in the Lancet, in February 1998, the UK's Medical Research Council convened a meeting at which Dr Andrew Wakefield was asked where he got the children he said may be vaccine-damaged? The truth, withheld from the MRC, was that many were on a list drawn up for a contract with a firm of lawyers suing MMR manufacturers. Wakefield laundered their parents' allegations into the medical literature as "findings", when they were really part of his research "methods"

Two years later, Dr Wakefield was asked a related question at another minuted meeting: a committee of the United States congress, chaired by an anti-MMR campaigner, Dan Burton. Burton asked Wakefield: "Who funded your study?" Again, Wakefield didn't reveal £50,000 from lawyers, explicitly paid for this work.