Ethics query over Royal Free child study asks how investigations help the patient

This page is research from an investigation by Brian Deer for the UK's Channel 4 Television and The Sunday Times of London 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

Even as research on autistic children admitted to the Royal Free hospital had already started for a legal contract awarded to Andrew 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