Lab
papers say research on autistic kids was started
before any ethical approval
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
In the first
phase of Brian Deer's inquiries, it was revealed
that the research investigations as published in the
Lancet weren't approved by the Royal
Free's ethics committee, despite saying in the
text that they were. In the second part, Brian
Deer has shown that most of the Lancet
children
included in the Lancet paper were admitted to the
hospital before the ethics committee approved
anything, despite an undertaking to the committee that
children enrolled before approval would be
excluded from the trial
Below are
lab reports from October 1996 - more than six
weeks before the hospital's ethics committee met
and approved a study (albeit not what was
published) by Wakefield and his colleagues. They
show that gut samples from children had already
been tested with antibodies for measles virus, in
what the documents describe as the "autistic
children study" and "autistic
child study". In February 2005,
Wakefield said through lawyers that he "at
all times had proper ethical approval for his
research to the extent the same was
required"
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