Ethics question over Wakefield research asks how investigations help patients

This page is material from the award-winning investigation by Brian Deer for The Sunday Times of London, the UK’s Channel 4 TV network and BMJ, the British Medical Journal, which exposed vaccine research fraudster Andrew Wakefield | Investigation summary

Even as research on autistic children admitted to the Royal Free hospital had already started for a legal contract awarded to Wakefield, the hospital's ethics committee was concerned about the extensive nature of the tests - including colonoscopies, lumbar punctures and MRI scans - planned to be performed on children with developmental disorders. The issue even reached the hospital's chief executive. Here is a form returned to the committee by one member - Andrew Stevens - then a senior manager at the hospital