The British medical journal The Lancet has at last retracted a flawed 1998 study that purported to find a connection between vaccines and autism. Its editors said the work should never have been published.
Ten of 13 authors of the study renounced its conclusions. Lead researcher Andrew Wakefield, who has made personal hay off the discredited vaccine-autism link for more than 10 years, faces being stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain.
Unfortunately, thousands, perhaps millions of people have been misled into believing the false conclusion. Many have rejected vaccines for their children as a result, leaving them vulnerable to diseases from mumps to chickenpox to influenza, which can cause severe illnesses or death.
The denouncement of Wakefield’s work won’t likely convince many true believers of the wrongheadedness of their ideas. But it is, at least, another point on the side of truth.
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