The witch-hunt against Andrew Wakefield Melanie Phillips

The witch-hunt against Andrew Wakefield
Wednesday, 11th February 2009

The Sunday Times last weekend resumed its witch-hunt against Andrew Wakefield, the gastro-enterologist who warned against the possible risks to children of the MMR vaccine following a paper he wrote in the Lancet in 1998. In this paper, he described a new childhood syndrome which he called autistic enterocolitis, which suggested a connection between a new type of bowel disease and autistic spectrum disorder and reported the fact that some of the parents of the children in the study thought there was a connection between these symptoms and the MMR vaccine. The titanic furore which subsequently engulfed Wakefield, in which virtually the entire medical establishment turned on him, effectively forced him out of Britain and has resulted in his being investigated by the General Medical Council for serious misconduct.