A British publication has reported that a controversial study linking a childhood vaccine to autism was fraudulent, being based on misinformation on the sample of children examined.
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) said on Wednesday that in a 1998 paper by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and colleagues committed an "elaborate fraud" by faking data linking the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) shot to autism.
The allegations are denied by the disgraced British doctor, who claims the findings have been replicated in five countries.
'Smear campaign'
Andrew Wakefield said that the BMJ report was a smear campaign by powerful pharmaceutical companies, in an interview late on Wednesday with CNN.
"It's a ruthless pragmatic attempt to crush any investigation into valid vaccine safety concerns," Wakefield said.
He said that pharmaceutical companies were undertaking the campaign because "they are very, very concerned about the adverse reactions to vaccines that are occurring in children."
Wakefield defined "they" as the journalist who completed the investigation supported by "the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries, which is funded directly and exclusively by the pharmaceutical industry".
The 1998 study convinced thousands of parents that vaccines are dangerous and led them to skip the doses. Immunisation rates have never climbed back to their rate before Wakefield's research.
It is blamed for ongoing outbreaks of measles and mumps.
The conclusions of the paper by Wakefield and his colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was originally published.
The BMJ's investigation was carried out by British journalist Brian Deer.
Deer found that of the 12 children studied by Wakefield, and claimed in his paper to be normal until they had the MMR vaccines, five have previously documented developmental problems.
He said that pharmaceutical companies were undertaking the campaign because "they are very, very concerned about the adverse reactions to vaccines that are occurring in children."
Wakefield defined "they" as the journalist who completed the investigation supported by "the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries, which is funded directly and exclusively by the pharmaceutical industry".
The 1998 study convinced thousands of parents that vaccines are dangerous and led them to skip the doses. Immunisation rates have never climbed back to their rate before Wakefield's research.
It is blamed for ongoing outbreaks of measles and mumps.
The conclusions of the paper by Wakefield and his colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was originally published.
The BMJ's investigation was carried out by British journalist Brian Deer.
Deer found that of the 12 children studied by Wakefield, and claimed in his paper to be normal until they had the MMR vaccines, five have previously documented developmental problems.
