LONDON (AP) -- The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.
The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues were renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal The Lancet, where it was published. Still, the suggestion that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine was connected to autism rattled parents worldwide; immunization rates for the MMR shot have never fully recovered.
A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper with hospital records, that Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues had altered facts about patients in their study.
The analysis, by a British journalist, Brian Deer, found that despite the assertion in Dr. Wakefield's paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, 5 had previously documented developmental problems. Mr. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children's parents.
Dr. Wakefield could not be reached for comment despite repeated calls and requests to the publisher of his recent book, which asserts that there is a connection between vaccines and autism that has been ignored by the medical establishment. Dr. Wakefield now lives in the United States, where he has a vocal following, including celebrity supporters like Jenny McCarthy.
Mr. Deer's article was paid for by The Sunday Times of London and Britain's Channel 4 television network. It was published online Thursday in the medical journal BMJ.
In an accompanying editorial, the BMJ editor Fiona Godlee and colleagues called Dr. Wakefield's study ''an elaborate fraud.'' They said Dr. Wakefield's work in other journals should be examined to see if it should be retracted.
Last May, Dr. Wakefield was stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain. Many other published studies have shown no connection between the MMR vaccination and autism.
But measles has surged since Dr. Wakefield's paper was published, and there are sporadic outbreaks in Europe and the United States. In 2008, measles was deemed endemic in England and Wales.
