By Brian Carnell

Monday, June 17, 2002

Dr. Andrew Wakefield kicked off anti-vaccine hysteria in Great Britain with his claim that he found measles in the gut of children who never contracted the disease. Wakefield and collaborator John O'Leary just last week announced that they had found the strain of measles used in the MMR vaccine in the gut of children.

The problem is that Great Britain's Department of Health claims Wakefield has not cooperated in efforts to verify his results. Dr. David Salisbury, who heads up the immunization division of the Department of Health, told the BBC that his department asked Wakefield four months ago for tissue samples that Wakefield used in his studies in order to try to reproduce the results. So far, there has been no answer from Wakefield.

Salisbury told the BBC,

We can speculate forever about what it [Wakefield's finding] might mean -- but what we need is a better understanding what has been done and how it has been done.

. . .

Four months on we still don't have an answer to the questions that we posed -- and these questions are crucial.

Replication of findings is crucial in scientific research, and unless Wakefield is willing to come clean in order to allow others to attempt to replicate his work, then it is of dubious value at best.

Source:

MMR researcher attacked. The BBC, June 17, 2002.

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