An investigative report by the Sunday Times of London revealed that Andrew Wakefield, the author of the original study in 1998 that ignited concern about the link between vaccines and autism, forged the results presented in his original paper. Review of confidential medical records and interviews with witnesses established that Wakefield manipulated patient data in order to create the appearance of a possible link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.

The original research published in The Lancet medical journal asserted that the families of eight out of twelve children with autism who had attended their clinic blamed the MMR vaccine for the disorder and said that before being given the shot the children were symptom free and that problems began occurring within days of the shot. In the same paper Wakefield and colleagues claimed that a newly discovered inflammatory bowel disease caused by the MMR vaccine was the crucial underlying mechanism involved in the development of autism.

Review of the same records by the Times revealed that in all but one autism case, concerns about the children's behavior had been raised before the child was vaccinated. Further, review of these same autism cases by hospital pathologists looking for evidence of any inflammatory bowel disease found that the gut functioning was normal in the majority of children.

Although the original study involved only twelve children, it launched an international movement aimed at preventing vaccinations. Wakefield himself fueled this movement by attending autism conferences worldwide where he often received standing ovations from parents of children with autism, who, in many instances, said it was a relief to finally know the cause behind their child's disease.

The outcry stemming from Wakefield's work led to millions of dollars being diverted from other research on autism, mental retardation, and other developmental disabilities in Europe and the United States to studies looking at the association between vaccines and autism. To date no carefully designed study has shown such a link. Several years ago Wakefield testified at congressional hearing in the United States where he and others claimed that the reason no other studies were finding a link between vaccinations and autism was because researchers and organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center's for Disease Control (CDC) were being influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.

Despite the now dozens of studies that have proven that there is no association between vaccines and autism, many parents in the United States and Europe do not vaccinate their children for fear that it may cause autism. Explanation for the continuing trend has been suggested as being due to parents not knowing about the many studies that have refuted this claim or as possibly being due to incorrect information about the link continuing to be distributed via the web and other information sources.

England and Wales have been especially hard hit by the lowered vaccination rates -- a reality likely due to the fact that the movement started there -- in part because Wakefield is an English researcher. When the original paper was published dozens of newspaper and television outlets in England reported the results. Since the 1998 paper was published the vaccination rate in England and Wales dropped from 92% to below 80% and the rate of confirmed cases of measles jumped by more than 2400%. In 1998 56 confirmed cases of measles were reported in England and Wales compared to 1,348 reported in 2008. Two children died from the disease. The drastic rise in measles cases is in part due to what health professionals refer to as "herd immunity". For measles, if 95% of the population is vaccinated then the entire population is protected. As the rate goes down the risk to the entire population becomes greater.

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