The Lancet has finally retracted, more than 10 years after it first published, a paper that linked MMR vaccine and an autism-like disorder. This original paper led to a huge health concern amongst parents and shows how misinformation in medicine can not only affect health care but also have long term scientific consequences.
Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al 1 are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. 2 In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published….
See also BMJ - Why did the Lancet take so long? | Reflections on investigating Wakefield










