Wakefield’s Manipulation

Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, published a study in the Lancet that was fraudulent. His medical research was seized by the UK medical register because they found dishonesty in his research paper. His findings published in the research paper was the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) caused a new syndrome of enterocolitis and regressive autism. The research was granted from the UK’s government of Legal Aid to Wakefield for enterocolitis with relevancy in gastroenterology for having inflammation in the digestive tract, small intestine, and colon. Aggressive autism, autism developed in childhood, was discovered in the sample of children. The media arose when the majority of people stopped getting vaccines for fear of developing this disease. Authorities dug into Wakefield’s case to find how he and his team interpreted this data.

Researchers began to question and manipulate his methods for finding autism was developed from vaccinations. The researchers found many complications with the sample size, selection of the study and the controlled environment. The profit from the study gave Wakefield the motivation to publish his fraudulent data, affecting the decline in vaccination administered. Wakefield’s case was filled with ethical violations from the methods of vaccinating children and scientific misrepresented when publishing the cause of Autism. This experiment exhibited holes and assumptions found in the methods and sample size Wakefield used to prove that vaccines led to autism.

To begin, having prior knowledge of the selected sample of children, Wakefield was looking for children to test with behavioral issues, including language impairment. Twelve children, eleven boys and one girl, ages three to ten years old, were referred to a pediatric gastroenterology unit with the history of normal development followed by lost acquired skills, including language, diarrhea and abdominal pain (Wakefield). Sequentially, the signs of characteristics in autism are children not responding to conversation, so there’s high “likelihood” the children could have been diagnosed with autism previous from the trails. These issues are crucial to scientific research and intently need to be reviewed before published.

Another misconduct was the sample size; having a small sample size can increase error and is tough to support a large population. With the sample size, Wakefield published that the children were previously normal and the vaccine would show effects further after. He manipulated the methods by ignoring the signs of autism already existed. The motivation behind this scandal was the payroll. He spent two years researching this matter and was getting salaried throughout the entire process. Wakefield was working on a lawsuit, for which he sought a bowel-brain “syndrome” as its centerpiece, claiming an undisclosed $230 an hour grossing him at $435,643, plus expenses (Deer). This high compensation held him to an authority of finding the leading cause of autism. He extended the truth of his findings to prove that vaccines linked to autism. Scientific accomplishments are accurate laws and principles that have been proven through research and methods.

Wakefield misrepresented the information in his case to give him wages that will forever be unpatriotic and unjustified in the field of medicine. After the data was published the public roared with confusion to get their children vaccinated. People still believe that Wakefield’s findings are true and refuse to get their child vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella. Indeed, given the prevalence of autism in England in 1998 of 1 in 2000 children (Stanley). If Wakefield was correct, twenty-five children per month would receive a diagnosis of autism soon after receiving MMR vaccine by chance alone (Stanley). The astonishing numbers show a drastic unrealistic incline with children ASD that leads fellow researchers to question the published data and reevaluate the doctor’s methods. Parents feared the consequences of vaccinations affecting their children. Mumps is a life-threatening disease has serious health risks and can spread over a larger population.

Resulting from this case, parents stopped vaccinating children and a larger outbreak of mumps appeared. The study was utterly discredited and resulted with Wakefield being shamed by the laws of science. He misrepresented the full study by giving false information and was conducted with manipulation. Wakefield lied to the public by publishing a journal in the Lancet of false findings linking vaccinations the leading cause of autism. Of the twelve children he tested, eight showed signs of autism before the trail. His conduction of methods was unreliable and showed many errors before given the vaccines. He showed a desire to prove this theory by lengthening the evidence. His paychecks were giving him courage and support to mislead the nation with this impractical knowledge. Having an enormous amount of profit gave Wakefield dignity to justify research in a scientific journal. When publishing this phenomenon, the media emerged with rage and stopped vaccinating their children. This movement escalated the mumps, measles and rubella disease to spread. The manipulation of Wakefield associating autism from the MMR vaccination is one of the biggest scandals in UK history.