Scientific Fraud: Andrew Wakefield

Andrew Wakefield published his infamous paper in 1998 and sent shockwaves through the research community. Wakefield began his research with the intent to claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism whether his findings supported that conclusion or not. There were serious public health consequences after the publication of Wakefield’s findings. Many parents chose to stop giving their children the MMR vaccine in the late nineties in case there was any truth to what Wakefield was claiming. In the previous two decades, there have been multiple outbreaks of both Measles and Mumps. Both are diseases that were almost completely eradicated before fears of vaccination began spreading.

Wakefield’s study was small, only 12 children, but he made some very large claims and some very big mistakes. Wakefield made a mistake before his research even started by choosing a specific group of children to focus on that he had hand-picked. These children already had a multitude of developmental conditions. According to an article published by The Indian Journal of Psychiatry, “they reported that their sampling was consecutive when, in fact, it was selective”. Once the paper was published all of the mistakes that were made came to light as scientists worked as quickly as possible to disprove the claims in Wakefield’s paper. Wakefield was eventually found guilty of scientific fraud due to his sampling issues, ethical violations, and false interpretation of evidence. He also was being financially incentivized by other MMR opponents to publish negative claims about the vaccine.

While Wakefield was proven false over 20 years ago, measles cases are still showing up in the United States despite the MMR vaccine being readily available. According to data from the Immunization Action Coalition, 940 measles cases were reported in the US between January and May of 2019. While 940 cases does not seem like that high of a number, this is anything but normal; “940 cases of measles is the largest number of cases reported in the U.S. in a single year since 1994”. This spike in cases can most likely be attributed to parents choosing not to vaccinate their children considering that 90% of the cases reported were unvaccinated and the rest had an unknown status. The median age of measles patients in 2019 was only 6 years old and 1 in 10 patients had to be hospitalized. This is a tragic occurrence that can be easily prevented by getting vaccinated and vaccinating your children. Measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox can all be eradicated from the United States as long as everyone does their part.