Mixed reaction after autism study termed fraud

With the publication of new research that declares a 13-year-old study "an elaborate fraud" for linking autism and bowel disease to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, the division between medical experts and devotees to the notion has grown deeper and sharper.

In 1998, Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet purporting an association between the MMR vaccine and the two medical conditions. And while never stating a direct cause and effect, Wakefield, who has since been stripped of his British medical license, called on doctors to suspend vaccinating children with the two-dose vaccine.

Wakefield, who was one of the founders, and the former executive director, of a Texas-based institute called The Thoughtful House Center for Children, resigned from the institute last year. 

Last year, more than a decade after publishing the medical report, The Lancet retracted it. Now, in a series of three articles that began this week in the British Medical Journal, a new investigation reveals the extent of what's being called a scam behind the vaccine scare.

The reports are written by an investigative journalist who probed the motivations behind Wakefield's research, an effort that has consumed the past seven years. Brian Deer reported that Wakefield and a lawyer were probably co-conspirators who attempted to extort compensation from vaccine makers and that Wakefield concocted his findings to aid the lawyer's lawsuits against the companies. Wakefield, who has spoken at autism events on Long Island, did not return Newsday's calls Thursday.

Christine Heeren of Middle Island, who was key in bringing Wakefield to Long Island to speak at a conference on autism five years ago, said she is sickened by reports against a doctor who she says has helped thousands of children. "To see him dragged through the mud like this is heartbreaking," said Heeren, the mother of an 11-year-old son with autism.

But medical experts say Wakefield's research caused thousands of children to go unvaccinated because of parental fears. Thousands of parents have abandoned vaccines of all kinds based on junk science notions in Wakefield's research, said Dr. Mary Beth Koslap-Petraco, who chairs the legislative affairs division of the Nurse Practitioner Association of Long Island.

Koslap-Petraco, who has also served on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says there is an upsurge in the United States in cases of whooping cough, measles, mumps and chickenpox that can be directly linked to avoiding vaccines.

Robert Krakow, a Garden City lawyer who represented dozens of families in a case three years ago that sought to link autism to vaccine, sees Wakefield as a victim. "You wonder why this focus on him and these misleading statements - these efforts to tar and feather him."