Appendix A – Wakefield: Defended/Exonerated
- John Walker-Smith – insurance company paid his legal bills; fought the claims in 2012, was
completely exonerated and regained his license. - Andrew Wakefield – insurance company would not cover the legal bills; decided to focus his efforts on
further research and education regarding vaccine safety.- Brian Deer. Sunday Times, BMJ (British Medical Journal), Lancet – evidence of conflict of interest
surfaces. - James Murdoch is still supported by GlaxoSmithKline
- BMJ & the Lancet wedded to Merck* CME (Continuing Medical Information) partnership
- Farce at British Medical Journal as Double Standards Persist Over Undeclared Competing Interests (the same
reason why the Lancet retracted the paper – because of Wakefields undisclosed competing interests.).
- Brian Deer. Sunday Times, BMJ (British Medical Journal), Lancet – evidence of conflict of interest
- The Lancet, in an editorial, admits finding no research fraud in Wakefield study. The editors of the
Lancet, after reviewing the allegations against the doctors and the responses by the senior doctors in
the study concluded that allegations of research misconduct were unfounded but that funding
disclosures should have been made regarding funding and parallel related work. (The GMC, which
rescinded their licences, did not find any falsification of date despite the claims made in the BMJ.) The
paper was retracted based on those non-disclosures. See A Statement by the Editors of the Lancet. - Also see:
- Additional detailed investigative analysis:
- Original BMJ article: How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed
* Merck is one of the leading vaccine manufacturers and holds the only patent on the MMR vaccine.
