The Lancet has retracted the 1998 paper that started the scare over a purported link between MMR vaccines and autism, days after a UK regulator censured the unethical behaviour of its lead author, the doctor Andrew Wakefield.
Among last week's findings of the General Medical Council was that Wakefield “caused blood to be taken from a group of children” at a party, and paid each child £5 for their blood.
The Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, tells the Guardian that when he read the GMC ruling, it became clear that statements in the paper were "utterly false" and that he felt "deceived". Concerns had been raised about the conduct of Wakefield's study in 2004 - but the Royal Free Hospital, where Wakefield worked, said his investigations "had been subjected to appropriate and rigorous ethical scrutiny." The Lancet now says that "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."
Evan Harris, an MP who is the Liberal Democrat's science spokesman, said he welcomed the complete retraction, but added that it "could and should have been done six years ago ... journals don't need to wait for court or GMC findings of fact to retract obviously flawed or unethical papers."
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