Roy Pounder brokered Lancet publication of discredited MMR-autism scare study

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

After publication of a now-notorious and largely retracted Lancet paper of February 1998, many doctors, asked: why would the Lancet publish such a transparently poor piece of work? Part of the answer lay in the mentor of the first author, Andrew Wakefield: Professor Roy Pounder, head of gastroenterology in the Royal Free hospital medical school. Previously, the Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, had worked at the hospital, where he was another of Pounder's underlings. It seems that the old boy network did the trick