- In late February, YouTube, Pinterest and Amazon Prime got involved in the fight against false information about vaccination.
- Vaccination Week, created in 2005 by the World Health Organization (WHO), will take place from April 24 to 30.
- In the second part of the series, we look back at the link between MMR vaccine and autism, established in 1998 by gastroenterologist surgeon Andrew Wakefield. It is one of the biggest scientific frauds at the heart of the “antivax” argument.
Edit: We republish on May 18, 2020 this article originally published on April 18, 2019, following a tweet from rapper Booba. This tweet referred to a film by Andrew Wakefield, whose portrait we paint below. The tweet has since been deleted.
February 28, 1998, Ricky Martin is in Paris, the agricultural show is about to open its doors and the world discovers Andrew Wakefield, face of one of the most important scientific frauds.
The then gastroenterologist surgeon published a study that day in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet . The doctor and his co-authors remain cautious, but suggest that there is a link between MMR vaccination (against measles, mumps and rubella) and autism. The publication is followed by media appearances in which the doctor is much less cautious and questions the vaccine.
Consequence, fewer children vaccinated across the Channel
The damage is done, the doubt settles in Great Britain. Vaccination coverage on these diseases is falling, "falling in certain areas to less than 50%", detail Françoise Salvadori and Laurent-Henri Vignaud in their book Antivax *. Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, was even arrested in 2001, journalists wanting to know if his son Leo was vaccinated. The effects are also being felt in the United States: "There were more cases of rubella in 2008 than in 1997 and 90% of these cases were not vaccinated", develop Hervé Maisonneuve and Daniel Floret in an article * *, based on data from the American authorities.
Andrew Wakefield bogus study
Doubts quickly set in with scientists, "who are alarmed at being unable to reproduce certain results of the study," recall Françoise Salvadori and Laurent-Henri Vignaud. A dozen co-authors of the study withdrew in the years following publication. Between 2004 and 2011, notably thanks to the work of journalist Brian Deer, it is revealed that Andrew Wakefield was paid by a lawyer who defended a group opposed to the vaccine. Channel 4 also shows that Andrew Wakefield filed a patent for a monovalent vaccine (a vaccine only for measles) before the study was published in the Lancet .
To add insult to injury, it is revealed that the study data were distorted: for example "the dates of vaccination in relation to the onset of autism spectrum disorders have been modified", underlines Françoise Salvadori for 20 Minutes. Of the twelve children in the study, “three of the nine children with regressive autism had never been diagnosed with autism; only one child had clearly had a regressive autism ”, detail Henri Maisonneuve and Daniel Floret. The children were recruited from families opposed to the vaccine. Andrew Wakefield also failed in ethics by performing colonoscopies or lumbar punctures without the advice of an ethics committee.
Removed from the register of doctors in Great Britain
Consequence: in May 2010, Andrew Wakefield was removed from the register of doctors in Great Britain and could no longer practice there. A few months earlier, in February, The Lancet finally retracted the 1998 article. An important act, but late. " The Lancet is one of the prestigious medical journals and, in 1998, the concept of withdrawal was underdeveloped, decrypts Hervé Maisonneuve for 20 Minutes . The Lancet , like other journals, values its reputation, and contradicting itself by retracting an article has long been considered demeaning. Fortunately, times have changed in 2019. These prestigious journals remove articles a little more easily, although this is still insufficient. "
Discredited, Andrew Wakefield has not yet said his last word: he settled in the United States, where he is one of the pillars of the anti-vaccine movement. He lectures and made an anti-vaccination film. "It may be starting to run out of steam because it did not succeed in a crowdfunding campaign for a second film," says Françoise Salvadori. The ex-doctor's site was even bought by a seller of electronic cigarettes.
Numerous studies show the absence of links between MMR vaccine and autism
In France, “the controversy has been little reported, decrypts the scientist. We can consider in 2019 that the Wakefield impact is very low. But the general link between vaccine and autism runs around the world. In 2017, Andrew Wakefield was invited to screen his film in Paris by French environmental MEP Michèle Rivasi. Before the controversy, the screening had been canceled.
Since the publication in The Lancet in 1998, numerous studies have demonstrated the absence of links between the MMR vaccine and autism. The most recent, published in March, covers more than 650,000 children born in Denmark between 1999 and 2010. The researchers "compared groups of vaccinated children and groups of unvaccinated children," explains Françoise Salvadori. They found no difference between the two groups for the onset of autism. "
* Françoise Salvadori is a doctor in virology / immunology and a lecturer at the University of Burgundy. Laurent-Henri Vignaud, lecturer at the same university, is a specialist in the history of science. They published Antivax, Resistance to vaccines from the 18th century to the present day , in Vendémiaire editions.
** Hervé Maisonneuve is a doctor and writes on scientific publications on his medical and scientific writing blog. Daniel Floret is a pediatrician and expert in vaccinology. The citations of this article are taken from their article "Wakefield affair: 12 years of wandering because no link between autism and MMR vaccination has been shown", published in September 2012 in La Presse Médicale .
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