Wakefield's timeline 1999-2001
- Vaccine Affect
- Apr 18
- 1 min read
SECRETS OF THE MMR SCARE
BMJ | 15 JANUARY 2011 | VOLUME 342
December 1999: Mark Pepys, new head of medicine at the Royal Free medical school, puts Wakefield on notice that he must replicate his research.
University College London volunteered to support his work. It offered him continuation on the staff, or a year’s paid absence, to test his MMR theories. He was promised help for a study of 150 children (to try to replicate his Lancet claims from just 12) and, in return for withdrawing from the January London conference, he would be given the intellectual property free.
September 2000: Andrew Wakefield replies to pressures to release the unfinished study “It is the unanimous decision of my collaborators and co-workers that it is only appropriate that we define our research objectives, we enact the studies as appropriately reviewed and approved, and we decide as and when we deem the work suitable for submission for peer review.”
October 2001: “Wakefield was shown the door. As I understand it, he got two years’ money, a statement clearing him of misconduct, the intellectual property for £10, uncollected, and a gag on Royal Free comment. “We paid him to go away,” Pepys told me. “And, of course, one of the conditions of him going away was that I wasn’t supposed to say anything critical of him to anybody, for ever after.””
Andrew Wakefield responded with “I have been asked to go because my research results are unpopular.”
