Debate over autism and vaccines rages on despite researcher's downfall

For years, experts have known that a 1998 paper linking childhood vaccines to autism was fatally flawed. British authorities even stripped the paper's primary author, Andrew J. Wakefield, of his permission to practice medicine.

On Wednesday, BMJ, a British medical publisher, sharpened the criticism against Wakefield, painting him as having deliberately manipulated data. It called his work "an elaborate fraud."

Many parents still rally to Wakefield's defense and believe that vaccines may cause autism. Will this most recent attack settle the matter? Unlikely, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The issue is fueled by parents' search for answers about their children's illness, he said. Satisfying them "will take a firmer knowledge of the real cause or causes of autism," which will take time.

"It doesn't matter that [Wakefield] was fraudulent," said Offit, a vaccine inventor who often counters attacks against the products. "It only matters that he was wrong."

The debate is not just academic. Fear of autism prompted some parents here and abroad to balk at vaccinating their children, leading to measles outbreaks and, in the United Kingdom, several deaths.

Some autism researchers say the issue also has diverted energy and money away from the bigger effort of finding causes and cures for the disorder, likely set in motion before birth.

Wakefield could not be reached for comment Thursday. A spokeswoman for Skyhorse Publishing, which produced his book, Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines - The Truth Behind a Tragedy, said he was in Jamaica at a conference.

The 1998 study Wakefield led acknowledged that it had not definitively proved an autism-vaccine link.

Skyhorse Publishing has released a statement saying that Wakefield believed the assertions in the BMJ article were "entirely false."

BMJ's article against Wakefield was the first in a three-part series. It caps a year of rebuke for Wakefield.

'Callous disregard'