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Wakefield sues BMJ over MMR articles

BMJ 2012; 344 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e310 (Published 10 January 2012) Cite this as: BMJ 2012;344:e310
  1. Clare Dyer
  1. 1BMJ

Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who was struck off the UK medical register after triggering a worldwide health scare by linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism, has launched a libel action against the BMJ, its editor in chief, Fiona Godlee, and the investigative journalist Brian Deer.

The lawsuit, which accuses the BMJ of publishing “false and defamatory statements” about Dr Wakefield, has been filed not in England, where the allegedly offending articles were published, but at a district court in Texas, where he now lives.

The claim focuses mainly on an article by Mr Deer, “How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed” (2011;342:c5347, doi:10.1136/bmj.c5347) and an accompanying editorial by Dr Godlee, both relating to his 1998 MMR paper in the Lancet (1998;351:637-41, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0), which was eventually retracted last year.

The court papers say that the BMJ articles, published in January 2011, accused him of “intentionally and knowingly manipulating or falsifying data and diagnoses” and were intended to cause damage to his “reputation and work as a researcher, academic and physician” and to “permanently impair his reputation and livelihood.”

Dr Wakefield’s coauthors retracted the paper’s claims of a temporal association between MMR vaccine and autism in 2004, after the first findings from an investigation by Mr Deer for the Sunday Times. The Lancet retracted the entire paper in February 2010, noting that elements of it “have been proven to be false” at hearings by a General Medical Council fitness to practise panel, which struck Dr Wakefield off the UK medical register in May 2010.

The BMJ said in a statement, “Following the findings of the General Medical Council’s fitness to practise panel and Mr Wakefield’s history of pursuing unfounded litigation, any action brought against the BMJ and Mr Deer in London would have been immediately vulnerable to being struck out as an abuse of process.

“Despite the findings of the GMC’s fitness to practise panel and his coauthors having publicly retracted the causation interpretation put forward by the Lancet paper, it would appear from the claim filed at court that Mr Wakefield still stands by the accuracy of the Lancet paper and his conclusion therein, thereby compounding his previously found misconduct . . . Unsurprisingly the BMJ and Mr Deer stand by the material published in the BMJ and their other statements and confirm that they have instructed lawyers to defend the claim vigorously.”

Notes

Cite this as: BMJ 2012;344:e310

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