This page is material from the award-winning investigation by Brian Deer for The Sunday Times of London, with spin-offs for a UK TV network and a top medical journal, which exposed vaccine research cheat Andrew Wakefield | Summary | Read the book

MMR vaccine uptake — MMR percentage uptake, 1994–2012, England & Wales. Source data generating each bar above combine the last three quarters of each calendar year with the first quarter of the next.

a – Wakefield, Thompson, et al, Lancet, 29 Apr 1995 (false MMR & Crohn’s disease claims).
b – Wakefield, Murch, Walker-Smith, et al, Lancet, 28 Feb 1998 (fraudulent MMR & autism claims — paper retracted Feb 2010).
c – Wakefield, Montgomery, et al, Adverse Drug Reactions and Toxicological Reviews, 22 Jan 2001 [release date] (sham, falsified, MMR safety review).
d – Wakefield, Uhlmann, Sheils, O’Leary, et al, Molecular Pathology, Apr 2002 (false measles PCR virology/autism claims).
e – Deer, “Revealed: MMR research scandal,” Sunday Times, 22 Jan 2004.
f – Deer, “MMR scare doctor planned rival vaccine,” Sunday Times, 14 Nov 2004.
g – Deer, “MMR doctor given legal aid thousands,” Sunday Times, 31 Dec 2006.
h – Deer, “MMR doctor fixed data on autism,” Sunday Times, 8 Feb 2009.
i – Deer, “Callous, unethical and dishonest,” Sunday Times, 31 Jan 2010.
j – Deer, “How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed,” BMJ based on Deer’s Sunday Times investigation, 5 Jan 2011.*

Journalism turns tide of MMR scare

Data released in November 2012 by the NHS Health and Social Care Information Service and represented in the graph above tracks the changing uptake of the three-in-one measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) in England and Wales.

The declines on the left of the graph are associated with a campaign waged by now-disgraced British-born former doctor Andrew Wakefield, secretly payrolled by a lawyer named Richard Barr — employment Wakefield never disclosed prior to its exposure in The Sunday Times.

Over a period of years, while working for the lawyer, Wakefield published a string of false reports in medical journals (not all itemised here), including critically a rigged research paper (b above) in The Lancet, retracted by the journal after being proven fraudulent in an award-winning Sunday Times investigation.

On the right (from e), a progressive recovery in public confidence is reflected in uptake rates, covering some eight years of that investigation, carried out by reporter Brian Deer. Not all of Deer’s stories are itemised.

READ HOW DEER’S WAKEFIELD
INVESTIGATION WAS CHECKED

Ironically, the drops in parental acceptance of MMR provide a natural test of Wakefield’s claims. If his (patented) assertions that the vaccine was causing an epidemic of autism were well founded, one would expect to see cases decline as vaccination rates fell. But the opposite occurred.

Taking a line between the uptake peaks at the far left and right of the graph, a substantial cohort of unvaccinated children becomes evident beneath it, growing year-by-year. This accumulation led to outbreaks of measles in the UK, killing some children and leaving others brain-injured.

* Note: at j in the graph above a more detailed account of The Sunday Times investigation was published by Deer in a British Medical Journal series, “Secrets of the MMR Scare,” with enormous impact in the United States.

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READ HOW DEER’S WAKEFIELD
INVESTIGATION WAS CHECKED

Graph data: 1994-95: 91.0%. 1995-96: 91.8%. 1996-97: 91.5%. 1997-98: 90.8%. 1998-99: 88.3%. 1999-00: 87.6%. 2000-01: 87.4%. 2001-02: 84.1%. 2002-03: 81.8%. 2003-04: 79.9%. 2004-05: 80.9%. 2005-06: 84.1%. 2006-07: 85.2%. 2007-08: 84.6%. 2008-9: 84.9%. 2009-10: 88.2%. 2010-11: 89.1%. 2011-12: 91.2%.