Reporter Who Debunked Autism/Vaccine Link Speaks at Lafayette

In 1998, the British medical journal The Lancet published a study that claimed there was a link between regressive autism and the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine in children.

But something about the report struck Brian Deer -- a reporter covering medical issues and the drug industry for the Sunday Times of London -- as funny. He thought back to 1974, and a similar claim, linking the pertussis vaccine with brain damage.

"And I thought, 'That's pretty damn cute,'" Deer told a packed auditorium Friday afternoon at Lafayette College.

Deer spent years investigating the Lancet study -- and more specifically, Andrew Wakefield, the man behind it.

His extensive reports eventually forced The Lancet to retract its study. But that was only after a lengthy legal battle, which included a medical hearing Deer compared -- in terms of length, anyway -- to the O.J. Simpson trial.

So what was wrong with Wakefield's work? A lot of things, Deer said.

He said Wakefield basically cherry-picked the 12 children involved, choosing those whose parents were members of anti-vaccine groups, or involved in lawsuits against vaccine makers. 

The fact that there were only 12 children involved in the study might seem troubling, but Deer argues that other epidemics had similarly small starts.

"AIDS was first reported, 30 years ago this summer, with just a handful of patients in San Francisco," he said.

The trouble with Wakefield's study was that -- as Deer reviewed the research -- the numbers seemed to change over time to make the work seem more credible. At first, 11 of the 12 children in the study were found to have autism after the vaccination; in the final version of the study, it was 8 children.

Some of the symptoms their parents reported -- pale complexion, fever, rash, convulsions -- aren't exactly symptoms of autism. Some of the children didn't even have autism at all, let alone the regressive type of autism Wakefield claimed.

Wakefield also had a huge conflict of interest, Deer told the audience, having tried to patent his own measles vaccine.

Wakefield denies all this. ("We're not close, as you can imagine," Deer said.)

And despite the fact that he's lost his medical license in England, he still has defenders, including actress/model Jenny McCarthy's Generation Rescue organization.  

"It's very difficult to unring the bell," Deer said.