The attack on Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues – the doctors who suggested a link between autism and the MMR vaccine – was a witch-hunt by medicine’s ruling body, the General Medical Council (GMC), as the UK’s own High Court has established. It has called on the GMC to get its house in order after it wrongfully struck off one of Wakefield’s researchers.
Prof John Walker-Smith, who was part of Wakefield’s research team that first suggested a connection between the vaccine and autism, was struck off by the GMC in 2010, along with Wakefield and another researcher.
But the decision was wrong, says the High Court which has overturned the decision, allowing Prof Walker-Smith to resume practice. Appeal court judge Mr Justice Mitting has called for changes in the way the GMC’s panel hearings are conducted. The panel had displayed “inadequate and superficial reasoning, and, in a number of instances, a wrong conclusion,” he said. In other words, Walker-Smith had been found guilty by association – and even being in any way connected to Wakefield was sufficient evidence to have him struck off.
(Source: BBC, March 7, 2012).
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