Study linking vaccine to autism was fraud

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110106/ap_on_he_me/eu_med_autism_fraud;_ylt=AlHuqPTG7IzfRht64f1tqhKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFkZmZ1c2NiBHBvcwMxNDcEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9oZWFsdGgEc2xrA2pvdXJuYWxzdHVkeQ--

– 22 mins ago

LONDON – The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.

The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published. Still, the suggestion the MMR shot was connected to autism spooked parents worldwide and immunization rates for measles, mumps and rubella have never fully recovered.

A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.

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