MMR row doctor spreads fear to US

Andrew Wakefield, the doctor under investigation over research claiming to link the MMR vaccine to autism, is relaunching his career in America with the aid of pop music and Hollywood celebrities.

Even as the medical regulator considers ending his career as a doctor in Britain, Wakefield has established a new clinic in Texas funded by the parents of autistic children.

Its supporters include Jim Carrey, the actor, his girlfriend Jenny McCarthy, a former Playboy model, and the Dixie Chicks, the all-girl rock group.

Last week McCarthy and Carrey were given an hour on the influential Oprah Winfrey Show to promote her latest best-selling book, Mother Warriors, which maintains that vaccines trigger autism in infants – a theory critics now call “Wake-fieldism”.

This dates back to 1998, when Wakefield, then a researcher at the Royal Free hospital in north London, published an article in The Lancet in which he linked 12 children suffering from the developmental disorder with MMR injections. The subsequent furore was blamed for a big decline in the number of parents immunising their children against measles.

Wakefield was supported by some parents who felt he was the first doctor to take their children’s problems seriously; but as other independent scientists repeatedly failed to replicate Wakefield’s results in the laboratory, 10 out of 12 of his Lancet co-authors retracted their support for his conclusions.

Wakefield, 51, is accused at the General Medical Council (GMC) of suppressing data and acting “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in failing to disclose how patients were recruited for the study.

This follows an investigation by The Sunday Times in 2004, which revealed that some of the children in his study were recruited by lawyers seeking to sue MMR manufacturers, and that he did not disclose thousands of pounds he received in “legal aid” to carry out experiments seeking to show how a vaccine could cause brain damage.

Wakefield is also accused of showing a “callous disregard for distress and pain” after performing colonoscopies and lumbar punctures on children. It was revealed at GMC hearings earlier this year that he paid children £5 to take blood samples at his son’s birthday party.

He said he maintained the highest ethical standards at all times. Hearings resume in November and the GMC is expected to decide next spring whether he should be struck off the medical register for professional misconduct.

Wakefield was “asked to leave” the Royal Free hospital in 2001. Three years later he moved with his wife Carmel to Austin, Texas where he made friends with Charlie Ball, a wealthy property development agent, and his wife Troy, who have an autistic son.

The Balls gave land and raised donations to build a clinic called Thoughtful House, to help children with autism. It maintains Wakefield’s core claims. Board members include two more Dixie Chicks, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, who is an official “adviser”.

Last week Wakefield, who lives in a £600,000, five-bed-room home in Austin, did not respond to inquiries by The Sunday Times. He is more talkative on the lucrative lecture circuit. Over the next few weeks he will speak on his theory of autism in California, Florida and, in December, at a chiropractors’ conference in the Bahamas.

Wakefield’s theory is defended by Jay Gordon, McCarthy’s doctor in west Los Angeles. “We are called dangerous for saying that vaccines cause autism, but to me, as a experienced paediatrician, it makes sense. If it’s not mercury, it’s aluminium in the injections.”

McCarthy’s devoted followers believe in a conspiracy by government agencies and pharmaceutical companies to hide evidence of a vaccine link.

Paul Offit, professor of paediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, warned: “Wakefield’s malign influence is spreading across the United States, where we have seen vaccination rates drop and unprecedented chains of measles infections in the last year.”

85%: Proportion of two-year-olds in England given MMR jab; 10% below target