---
title: "Lancet MMR vaccine-autism report"
chunk: 6/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_MMR_vaccine-autism_report"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:00.602839+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Aftermath ==
Characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the 20th Century", The Lancet paper led to a sharp drop in vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland. Promotion of the claimed link, which continues in anti-vaccination propaganda despite being refuted, led to an increase in the incidence of measles and mumps, resulting in deaths and serious permanent injuries. Following the initial claims in 1998, multiple large epidemiological studies were undertaken. Reviews of the evidence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, the UK National Health Service, and the Cochrane Library all found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Physicians, medical journals, and editors have described Wakefield's actions as fraudulent and tied them to epidemics and deaths.
Among commentators drawing on Deer's investigation, academic Peter N. Steinmetz summarizes six fabrications and falsifications in the paper itself and in Wakefield's response: findings of non-specific colitis; timing of MMR vaccine administration and first behavioral symptoms; findings of regressive autism; ethics consent statement; conflict of interest statement; and methods of patient referral.
Wakefield has continued to defend his research and conclusions, saying there was no fraud, hoax or profit motive. He has subsequently become known for anti-vaccination activism. In 2016, Wakefield directed the anti-vaccination film Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe.

== See also ==

Vaccine hesitancy
Folk epidemiology of autism

== References ==