Lancet Withdraws Article on Vaccine's Safety
Regarding the Lancet paper, the panel found that Dr. Wakefield's describing the referral process as “routine” when some of the patients were actually specifically selected for the study “was irresponsible and misleading and contrary to [his] duty as a senior author.”
The panel also noted that four of the children in the study lacked a history of gastrointestinal symptoms, thereby making them unlikely “routine referrals” to the hospital's gastroenterology department, and that Dr. Wakefield should have disclosed to the Lancet that in 1997, he filed for a patent on a new MMR vaccine.
In the case of one of the children in the study, the panel also found that Dr. Wakefield “ordered the neurophysiological investigations without having requisite paediatric qualifications and writing an incorrect diagnosis on the investigation form.”
The panel also noted that Dr. Wakefield paid some children who were guests at his son's birthday party £5 ($8) to have their blood taken as part of the study; it noted that this showed “a callous disregard for the distress and pain that [Dr. Wakefield] knew or ought to have known the children involved might suffer.”
In addition to its statement on the withdrawal of the article, the Lancet's editors also released a 2004 comment from the Royal Free and University College Medical School and the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust stating that they were “entirely satisfied that the investigations performed on the children reported in the Lancet paper had been subjected to appropriate and rigorous ethical scrutiny. Because the nature of the condition affecting child behavior and gastroenterological symptoms was unknown and required elucidation, the investigation of these children was properly submitted to and fully discussed by the Ethical Practices Committee at the Royal Free Hampstead in 1996…. The clinical management and investigation of these children was performed at the Free by a dedicated team of consultant pediatric gastroenterologists, in full consultation with and agreement of the parents of the affected children” (Lancet 2004;363:824).
Does The Lancet's withdrawal of the paper help vaccination advocates? “I think the retraction is far too little far too late,” Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said in an interview.
“The Lancet published a hypothesis that was unsupported and has since been disproven by careful scientific study. But there is no undoing the harm of that original paper. Many parents abandoned the MMR vaccine. As a consequence, hundreds of children were hospitalized and four were killed by measles. This retraction will do nothing to change that,” Dr. Offit continued.
The Lancet and this news organization are both owned by Elsevier.
