A doctor accused of wrongly causing a health scare over the MMR vaccine paid children £5 each to give blood samples at his son’s birthday party, a disciplinary hearing has been told.

Andrew Wakefield abused his position as a doctor and showed “a callous disregard” for the distress and pain that the children — thought to be as young as 4 — might suffer, the General Medical Council was told.

The allegations emerged yesterday along with charges connected to research by Dr Wakefield and his former colleagues, John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch, that claimed the combined vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella carried serious health risks.

The doctors appeared before the GMC’s fitness-to-practise panel charged with serious professional misconduct, which they deny.

All three are accused of performing procedures, such as colonoscopies, barium meals and lumbar punctures, on children that were “contrary” to the children’s clinical interests and conducted without the proper ethical approval and consent forms.

The GMC accused Dr Wakefield of bringing the profession into disrepute by taking blood from children at his son’s party at some point before March 20, 1999, when he joked about the incident while giving a presentation at the Mind Institute, California.

Footage was shown on ITN last night of the episode.

Dr Wakefield is seen on video saying: “And you line them up — with informed parental consent, of course. They all get paid £5, which doesn’t translate into many dollars I’m afraid. But . . . and . . . they put their arms out and they have the blood taken. All entirely voluntary.” [Laughter]

He says that two of the children fainted, while one was sick over his mother, which drew laughter from the audience.

Dr Wakefield is then heard joking: “People said to me, ‘Andrew, look, you know, you can’t do this, people, children won’t come back to you. [Laughter] I said, ‘You’re wrong’. I said, ‘Listen, we live in a market economy. Next year they’ll want £10’.”

The MMR controversy began after the doctors published their research in The Lancet in 1998, claiming that the jab overloaded the immune system, causing bowel problems and also autism and other illnesses.

Further research has quashed these conclusions. At the time, all three doctors were employed at the Royal Free Hospital’s medical school in Hampstead, North London. They conducted the study on 11 British children without approval from the hospital’s ethics committee, the GMC was told.

The list of allegations against Dr Wakefield took more than an hour to read out. One of the key accusations is that he failed to declare that he was being paid for advising solicitors on legal action by parents who believed their children had been harmed by MMR. Another charge is that he ordered subsequent studies “without the requisite paediatric qualifications”. He is also alleged to have allowed one child — Child 10 — to be given an experimental cocktail of drugs, known as “transfer factor”, with the view to it being developed into a new measles vaccine. Dr Wakefield admitted being involved in proposals to set up a company to manufacture the drug. The father of Child 10 was to be the company’s managing director.

It was alleged that he did not reveal that he had accepted £50,000 from the Legal Aid Board for research to support legal action by parents who believed their children were harmed by MMR. He was also accused of being “dishonest” and “irresponsible” when submitting his views about MMR for publication.

The hearing continues.

— An outbreak of measles in East London, has added to fears that the disease is making a comeback (Nigel Hawkes writes).

City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust says that there have been 32 cases in Hackney since May and 13 in the past week. Most of the cases were among the Orthodox Jewish community.

Of 133 cases in England and Wales last month, only six were in people who had been vaccinated.

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