Timeline

BMJ, the British Medical Journal, 11 January 2011

Brian Deer

October 1988: The three in one measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is introduced to the UK after successful use in the US since 1971. Previously, single measles and rubella vaccines were used, and there was no licensed mumps vaccine

September 1992: The UK Departments of Health withdraw two brands of MMR vaccine after research shows them to be associated with a raised incidence of transient mumps meningitis, although much lower than with natural disease

January 1994: A campaign group, JABS, is launched in Wigan, Lancashire, alleging that MMR causes brain damage and other problems in children. Autism and inflammatory bowel disease are not initially claimed

March 1995: Andrew Wakefield, a researcher at the Royal Free medical school, files for a patent claiming that Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis may be diagnosed by detecting measles virus in bowel tissue and body fluids

READ HOW DEER’S WAKEFIELD
INVESTIGATION WAS CHECKED

September 1995: Paediatric gastroenterologist John Walker-Smith moves with most of his team from Bart’s hospital, London, to set up a service at the Royal Free

February 1996: JABS solicitor, Richard Barr, retains Wakefield, at £150 an hour, plus expenses, to support a speculative legal attack on MMR manufacturers. This contract is not publicly disclosed

July 1996: The first child is admitted to the Royal Free for research to try to show a link with MMR. The research is commissioned by, and supported with a £55,000 grant from, the UK Legal Aid Board, but this is not publicly disclosed

September 1996: Wakefield and his mentor Roy Pounder meet medical school managers to discuss market projections for a new business based on purportedly diagnosing Crohn’s disease from the presence of measles virus

June 1997: Claiming that the measles virus in MMR causes problems, Wakefield files for a patent on a “safer” single measles vaccine and for products to treat both autism and inflammatory bowel disease. This, too, is not publicly disclosed

February 1998: The Lancet publishes a 12 patient case series by Wakefield and 12 others, proposing a link between MMR and a “new syndrome” of autism and bowel disease. At a press conference, he urges the use of single vaccines instead of MMR

February 1998: Just days after the press conference, Wakefield and business partners meet Royal Free medical school managers to discuss a joint company to develop products based on his MMR claims, including “a replacement for attenuated viral vaccines”

February 1999: Unigenetics is incorporated, with Wakefield and a Dublin pathologist, John O’Leary, as directors. The company is awarded £800,000 by the Legal Aid Board to perform tests on samples from children seen at Walker-Smith’s Royal Free unit

December 1999: Mark Pepys, new head of medicine at the medical school, challenges Wakefield about his business scheme and puts him on notice that he must replicate his research

January 2001: The Daily Mail and other newspapers launch campaigns backing Wakefield, working with JABS, after he publishes a purported review of his evidence and repeats his calls for single vaccines

October 2001: Wakefield is asked to leave the Royal Free after failing to mount a large scale controlled study to confirm or refute his claims about MMR

December 2001: Prime Minister Tony Blair is ambushed by Wakefield supporters, who claim that his youngest son, Leo, did not have MMR. The Blairs initially decline to comment but much later deny the claim

May 2002: Amid continuing media campaigns over MMR, particularly by the Mail and Telegraph groups, the magazine Private Eye issues a special edition, written in collaboration with families that are suing vaccine manufacturers

January 2003: Vaccination among 2 year olds falls to 78.9%: below the 92% the Department of Health says is needed to maintain herd immunity. Figures in parts of inner London are half the national rates

September 2003: The Legal Services Commission stops funding for Barr’s lawsuit after barristers for the claimants report to the commission that, on the evidence, they cannot make a case that MMR causes autism

February 2004: The Sunday Times reveals that the Legal Aid Board funded the Lancet research and that many of the children were litigants. Richard Horton, the journal’s editor, rejects more serious charges against the authors, later proved by the GMC

March 2004: Ten of the 1998 paper’s 13 authors, excluding Wakefield, retract its “interpretation” section, which claimed an association in time between MMR, enterocolitis, and regressive developmental disorders

November 2004: [Deer’s] Channel 4’s Dispatches reveals Wakefield’s single vaccine patent and that, despite Wakefield’s claims that the culprit for the disorders is measles in MMR, molecular tests in his laboratory found no trace of the virus

January 2005: Wakefield initiates libel lawsuits, funded by the Medical Protection Society, against the Sunday Times, Channel 4, and Brian Deer over Deer’s website, claiming that all allegations are false and defamatory

March 2005: Among much research rejecting any link with developmental disorders and bowel disease, research is published showing that, after MMR was discontinued in Japan, the incidence of autism diagnoses continued to rise

October 2005: In the London High Court, Mr Justice Eady refuses an application from Wakefield to freeze his libel actions and orders him to proceed to trial of Deer’s allegations against his “honesty and professional integrity”

April 2006: As measles outbreaks are reported across Britain, the first death in the UK from the disease in 14 years is reported—a 13 year old boy from the traveller community

December 2006: The Sunday Times reveals Wakefield’s personal funding from Barr to support the lawsuit over MMR: £435,643 plus expenses, from the legal aid fund. Some other Royal Free doctors were also paid

January 2007: Two days after the payments from Barr are revealed, the Medical Protection Society stops funding for Wakefield’s libel actions and through him agrees to pay the defendants’ costs of about £800,000 on top of its own legal bills

July 2007: At a fitness to practise hearing in London, the General Medical Council opens its case alleging serious professional misconduct by the Lancet paper’s three senior authors, Wakefield, Walker-Smith, and endoscopist Simon Murch

February 2009: The Sunday Times alleges that Wakefield “fixed” the appearance of a link between MMR and autism. He denies fraud and files a complaint with the UK Press Complaints Commission, which he later abandons

February 2009: In the United States, three test case judgments for 5000 claims based on Wakefield’s theories are handed down in federal court, rejecting the allegation that MMR can cause autism. They are upheld on appeal in August 2010

January 2010: A panel comprising three doctors and two lay members gives findings of fact on the GMC’s case, upholding dozens of charges against Wakefield, Walker-Smith, and Murch and sending all three forward for sentencing

February 2010: Six years after the matters were raised with the Lancet, the journal fully retracts the 1998 paper. Horton describes aspects of it as “utterly false” and says he “felt deceived”

May 2010: After a 217 day inquiry, the GMC panel orders Wakefield and Walker-Smith to be erased from the medical register, but notes that Murch had shown “insight” and finds him not guilty of serious professional misconduct