The connection to vaccines and autism, specifically the MMR in the UK, was made in the late 1990s by gastroenterologist Dr Andrew Wakefield and a team at the Royal Free Hospital in north London. Inundated with referrals to their paediatric gastroenterology clinic they heard the same story over and over. ‘My child was developing normally until they had their MMR jab, then they developed bowel disease and autism.’ Dr Wakefield investigated and his case series, published in the Lancet, looked at 12 children and concluded that more research was needed to prove a link.
The government could have conducted vaccinated versus unvaccinated studies to put the matter to bed. Instead they doubled down on the vaccine programme and refused to invest, and used epidemiological studies to dismiss the claims. (An epidemiological study is number-crunching which looks at the link to human health events after exposure to specific chemical agents, not sensitive enough to detect rare adverse events. They are the same studies the tobacco industry used to proclaim cigarette smoking did not cause lung cancer.)
