Charlatan whose bogus theory cost children’s lives is lucky with the law

ANDREW WAKEFIELD, now struck off the medical register in Britain because of his dangerous campaign falsely to link the MMR vaccine to autism, is a lucky man that being disbarred from practice is all that has happened to him. Why are there no laws in Britain to prosecute charlatans like him when their lies damage the public health and become common currency worldwide?

Many children in this country were denied the MMR vaccine because anxious parents – thinking they were doing the right thing but duped by Wakefield and the attendant campaign hyped by some irresponsible newspapers – decided not to have it administered. Children have died as a result and others have been severely disabled. It is more than a decade since Wakefield was in full flight, highlighting a possible link between the injection of the vaccine to combat the serious and sometimes deadly diseases of mumps, measles and rubella and the onset of autism and inflammatory bowel disease.

He said that in 12 cases he had studied the first “behavioural symptoms” of autism and bowel problems came only after the injection. His “solution” was to suggest to parents that the vaccines be delivered separately and at lengthy intervals.