Health experts at Great Ormond Street Hospital point to improvements in MMR vaccination rates. (This follows the General Medical Council's ruling on the conduct of those involved in the original Lancet paper, now withdrawn by the Lancet and widely seen as discredited.)
Dr David Elliman, Consultant in Community Child Health, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and Dr Helen Bedford, Senior Lecturer in Children's Health, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCL, said:
“Today’s GMC ruling relates to financial and ethical irregularities, not primarily to the quality of the science. In the hearing, however, it emerged that contrary to what was said in the original Lancet paper, the children included in the study were not random cases. Partly because of this, the paper has been formally retracted.
"The alleged link between autism and MMR vaccine had been disproved long before the GMC hearings even began. Hopefully the whole episode can now be laid to rest. In the last two years, there was a large increase in cases of measles with deaths in 2006 and 2008. However it is reassuring that parents are regaining their confidence in the safety of this vaccine. Take-up rates are steadily improving and measles cases falling. Hopefully this trend will continue."
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