Epidemic of panic

摘要

Groundless suspicions that vaccines cause autism have an alarmingly long shelf life. The issue flared up again earlier this month, when an investigative report in the British Medical Journal docu-' mented fraud in a retracted 1998 paper in The Lancet by UK gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield. It had alleged a link between the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and autism. The anti-vaccine community once again defended Wakefield.