Royal Free attacks Wakefield's claims to have found virus using staining methods

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

As concern grew over the attack on MMR, launched off the back of a Lancet paper in February 1998, the Royal Free's medical school took the extraordinary step of issuing the press release below, criticising the core of the theory expounded, from its own premises, by Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield had long claimed to have used, relatively crude, microscopic staining techniques to find evidence of measles virus both inflammatory bowel disease and autism. But, as the statement here shows, his employers didn't agree

The press release states that Wakefield was invited to collaborate with independent laboratories, with a view to testing his hypothesis. No record exists of him doing so. He did, however, enter into a collaboration with John O'Leary in Dublin, largely funded by the UK's Legal Aid Board, whose work would also be strongly criticised