For some people, medical science is a sinister business. Take the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, the subject of a dodgy piece of research in 1998 linking it to autism. The paper, which appeared in The Lancet, was subsequently withdrawn and one author, Dr Andrew Wakefield, was revealed to have vested interests in raising the alarm. He was receiving legal aid money to build a case against vaccine manufacturers and had also filed a patent application on a measles vaccine. Wakefield and two other authors now face the possibility of being struck off by the General Medical Council.

No matter: parental confidence in the triple jab plunged, and thousands of children were put at risk. In the intervening decade there have been umpteen major peer-reviewed studies decrying any link and confirming MMR’s safety, the latest of which was published yesterday in the Archives of Disease and Childhood. Not one peer-reviewed paper in a major journal has argued the toss the other way. Wakefield has had a decade to prove his case and, against a mountain of oppposing evidence, he has failed to muster a molehill. Vaccination figures are slowly rising again.

Yet you can guarantee the issue will not be laid to rest. The miserable thing about this MMR business is how flimsy scientific findings were elevated into a matter of faith. Wakefield, now practising in America, invoked the idea of an Establishment conspiracy to cover up a supposed epidemic of vaccine-induced autism in our midst (the rise in autism cases has come from better diagnosis).

This lingering conspiratorial element has allowed doubts about MMR to fester dangerously in the minds of the public, although not among the medical profession.

Deprived of scientific evidence for his hunch, Wakefield exploits the misplaced faith of desperate parents.

Surely it is time for him to step down from the altar?

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