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Vaccine Link to Autism Retracted

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBh7-qI9G08

Overview

A CBS News report from February 2010 on The Lancet's full retraction of Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper linking the MMR vaccine to autism. The retraction followed the General Medical Council's finding, a week earlier, that Wakefield had acted dishonestly and irresponsibly, that the children had not been "consecutively referred" as the paper claimed, and that he had subjected them to invasive procedures without ethical approval. The report covers the ruling, the twelve-year gap between publication and retraction, and the parents who still believed him.

Notes

  • Twelve years. The paper was doubted within months, partially retracted by most of its authors in 2004, and exposed as fraudulent by Brian Deer from 2004 onwards; the journal waited for a regulator to act before it would. That is the Appeal to Authority running in reverse: the authority was slow precisely because it was the authority.
  • The retraction changed nothing for the movement it had created. Anti-Vaccine belief had by 2010 become identity, and identity is not retracted. The sequel is the measles outbreaks of the 2010s and the elevation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2025.
  • The clip is short and useful as a primary source for the date and the GMC findings. The long version of the story is Vaccines and Autism - A Measured Response.

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