THE doctor, Andrew Wakefield, whose research sparked a worldwide scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine, is today increasingly isolated after a scientist previously seen as his closest collaborator repudiated his claim of a link with autism. Last week 10 of his former colleagues also disowned his work.

The General Medical Council has embarked on an investigation of the affair that has led to thousands of children not being vaccinated against a killer disease.

Yesterday Professor John O’Leary of Trinity College Dublin who, like Wakefield, carried out scientific tests for solicitors suing MMR manufacturers, said that this work “did not support the MMR/autism hypothesis”.

On Thursday the medical journal The Lancet published a statement by 10 of Wakefield’s 12 original co-authors “retracting the interpretation” of their 1998 study, which led to the suggestion of a link between MMR and autism.

Richard Horton, the magazine’s editor, even went so far as to send Wakefield an e-mail offering an opportunity for an “honourable retreat” from his position.

Wakefield caused widespread concern about the MMR vaccine six years ago when The Lancet paper was published. It claimed that the parents of eight out of the 12 children used in the study associated the jab with the onset of brain damage.

He announced at a press conference to launch the research study that parents should opt for single jabs rather than the MMR triple vaccine.

As a result, tens of thousands of children have been left unprotected against measles — a disease that as recently as the 1960s routinely killed and left many more British children catastrophically handicapped.

Last year there were 442 confirmed cases of measles in Britain, four times more than in 1998 — the year Wakefield’s Lancet paper was published.

In some areas only 53% of children are now vaccinated.

It was a four-month Sunday Times investigation that exposed the “fatal flaw” in the original research study and revealed a serious conflict of interest:

Wakefield failed to inform his 12 co-authors or the Royal Free hospital’s ethics committee of his conflict of interest when applying for approval for the children to undergo a series of invasive surgical procedures, including lumbar punctures.

John Reid, the health secretary, demanded a General Medical Council investigation and David Salisbury, the government’s head of immunisation policy, said he welcomed this newspaper’s findings.

The Sunday Times report sent out shockwaves. Parents who had previously seen Wakefield as a hero determined to find the cause of their children’s serious illness were forced to reassess his research.

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