British Medical Journal slams anti-vaccine hoax
The now infamous 1998 research paper in The Lancet medical journal linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to a new combined disorder of bowel problems and autism.
Public confidence in the jab collapsed but last year Wakefield was struck off the medical register with the panel saying he was callous and dishonest.
The British Medical Journal has reviewed the six million word transcript of the General Medical Council hearings, comparing them with the findings of investigative journalist Brian Deer and the research paper in the Lancet.
Huge discrepancies have been found between what was in the children’s medical notes and what was published about them in the Lancet.
As a result, Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor of the BMJ, has accused Dr Wakefield of deliberate fraud and said the scare was a hoax on the scale of the Pildown man, which was for 40 years believed to have been the missing evolutionary link between ape and man.