the mmr vaccine

• October 1988 3-in-1 measles mumps and rubella serious childhood diseases.
• February 1998 the lancet published a paper by DR Wakefield claiming there is a link between autism and the MMR vaccine (study of 12 children 2 were his own)
• January 2001 newspapers found this and launched campaigns backing to dr Wakefield after he re-released his findings
• 2002 study of 537,303 children in Denmark showed no link
• 2003/2004 20% of children had not been vaccinated – in some areas this rose to 50%
• 2004 study of over 5,000 children showed no link
• April 2006 ,medical outbreaks across Britain which caused the uk the firs death of measles in 40 years
• July 2007 the GMC opened a case of serious professional misconduct against Dr Wakefield
• February 2010 the lancet announced that they should never had published the research calling it ‘utterly false’ and said they ‘felt deceived’
• May 2010 – Andrew Wakefield was found guilty of professional misconduct and was striped of his doctorate on the medical register and his research was discredited
• 2012 2,016 cases of measles in England and Wales highest total for 18 years
• 2015 – study of 95,000 children in us found no link between MMR and autism
• He moved to America and did the same
• 2024 – according to a study of 1,500 Americans 1 in 4 people believe the myth of the vaccine
• “Perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years” Flaherty (2011)