Doctors and scientists have come together to endorse the safety of the MMR vaccine, ahead of a disciplinary hearing today involving the researchers who first linked it to health risks.

Andrew Wakefield and two other doctors, John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch, deny charges of serious misconduct over their research on MMR. The trio published a paper in The Lancet in 1998 suggesting that there could be a link between the triple jab – against measles, mumps and rubella – and bowel disease and autism. The subsequent health scare led to falling rates of immunisation.

Amid concerns that the MMR and autism row will resurface during the General Medical Council hearing, institutions that include the Royal Colleges of Paediatricians, General Practitioners, Pathologists and Physicians have released a statement that reads: “The undersigned believe that the MMR triple vaccine protects the health of children. A large body of scientific evidence shows no link between the vaccine and autism.” It is also signed by the Medical Research Council, the British Medical Association and Great Ormond Street children’s hospital among others.

The GMC’s fitness-to-practise panel will hear allegations that Dr Wakefield and Professors Walker-Smith and Murch did not act in the best interests of children. At the time of the study they were employed at the Royal Free Hospital’s medical school in London, with honorary clinical contracts at the hospital.

The GMC charge sheet covers several allegations, including that Dr Wakefield took blood samples from children at a birthday party after offering them money. All three are accused of performing colonoscopies and lumbar punctures on children without proper approval and contrary to the children’s clinical interests. Dr Wakefield, who now works in Texas, and Professor Walker-Smith are accused of acting “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in failing to disclose in the Lancet paper how they recruited patients for the study. It is also alleged that Dr Wakefield was being paid for advising solicitors on legal action by parents who believed their children had been harmed by MMR, and that he ordered investigations “without the requisite paediatric qualifications”.

The three are accused of conducting the study on a basis not approved by the hospital’s ethics committee. They deny all of the charges.

The GMC emphasised that it would not be assessing the validity of competing scientific theories on MMR and autism. A GMC statement said: “We investigate complaints about individual doctors in order to establish whether their fitness to practise is impaired and whether to remove or restrict a doctor’s registration. The GMC does not regard its remit as extending to arbitrating between competing scientific theories generated in the course of medical research.”

Conflicting evidence

February 1998
Study by Andrew Wakefield, at the Royal Free Hospital in London, suggests MMR vaccine might be linked to higher risk of autism and bowel disorders

March 1998
Panel of experts for Medical Research Council says that there is no evidence of such a link; subsequent studies support this

April 2000
Dr Wakefield and John O’Leary, of Coombe Women’s Hospital in Dublin, tell the US Congress that there is “compelling evidence” of a link

January 2001
Dr Wakefield claims the combined MMR vaccine has not undergone proper safety tests

March 2005
Japanese scientists say they have evidence that the MMR vaccination is not linked to a rise in autism: a rise in autism after withdrawal of the MMR jab in the country has been noted, they say

May 2006
US scientists say the measles virus has been found in the guts of autistic children with bowel disease, but study leader says this does not show that the MMR vaccine caused the condition

Source: Times database

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