The Government’s chief medical officer, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, went on the newly de-fanged Today programme to accuse Dr Wakefield of “poor science”. But then he almost gave the game away, saying: “If the paper had never been published, then we wouldn’t have had the controversy and we wouldn’t have had the seed of doubt sown in parents’ minds.”That is as maybe. There is nothing in what has so far been revealed that casts doubt on Dr Wakefield’s science, or on his findings. And these findings – lest there be any confusion – were not that there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, but that the possibility cannot be completely excluded.What followed The Lancet’s wishful hindsight has been a transparently orchestrated campaign.

By yesterday, ministers and the medical establishment were in full cry. But it is not necessary to have an advanced degree in medical science, nor yet in logic, to find a certain dissonance between the charges laid against Dr Wakefield and the facts. So should the habitual lack of disclosure by scientists of such funding when they come to publish their findings in the scientific journals that give them their academic credibility. This, according to The Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, constituted “a fatal conflict of interest” and rendered Dr Wakefield’s findings “entirely flawed”.The extent to which scientific research in universities is funded by outside interests, especially pharmaceutical companies, should be a real source of concern. While conducting his research on autism and bowel disease, he was also being paid to research whether parents of autistic children might have a case for suing the Government for vaccine damage. By last year, the number of children receiving the MMR had fallen so far that the Government warned that a measles epidemic was a real risk.What caused the editor of The Lancet to change his mind about Dr Wakefield’s article was the discovery that the scientist had been working for two masters.

What it absolutely did not deserve was the unseemly chorus of “told you so” that it elicited from ministers and luminaries of the British medical establishment, who flocked to the airwaves to discredit the man, rather than dispute his views. Are we wrong to detect the distant whirr of the same spin machine that so recently set about destroying the reputations of David Kelly, Andrew Gilligan and others?
The original article, or rather remarks made by Dr Wakefield at a press conference introducing his article, had suggested that there might be a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. The effect of Dr Wakefield’s suggestion was immediate and dramatic: a sharp fall in the number of parents heeding government advice to have their children inoculated with the all-in-one MMR vaccine and an equivalent rise in the number demanding separate vaccinations – often paying for them privately – or simply refusing to have their children vaccinated against the diseases at all. The statement by the editor of The Lancet that he would not have published Dr Andrew Wakefield’s study on autism, bowel disease and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination (MMR) if he had known in 1998 what he knows now, deserved to capture the headlines. If Israel really wishes to avoid a World Court condemnation, it should immediately stop construction of this edifice.