Eugenie Samuel Reich - Fresh dispute about MMR 'fraud'
January 13, 2012 It is one of the most serious allegations that could be made about a doctor: manipulating patients' histories to make money. So it is no wonder that the charges, levied by editors of theBritish Medical Journal (BMJ) in January against medical researcher Andrew Wakefield, are still getting close scrutiny. Now an American whistleblower advocacy group has joined the fray over Wakefield, who in 1998 hypothesized a link, now scientifically disproven, between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) and autism.
On 9 November, David Lewis of the National Whistleblower's Center in Washington DC published a letter in the BMJ (http://bmj.com) arguing that Wakefield did not commit research fraud. Lewis told Nature that he thinks the combination of public charges and a slow, secretive investigation has left the public not knowing whom to believe and is unfair to the accused researcher. "[The system] throws people like Andy into a no-man's-land," Lewis says.
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