Court Says Vaccine Not the Cause of Autism - US News and World Report

Court Says Vaccine Not the Cause of Autism - US News and World Report: "Thursday's decision follows a published report earlier this week that the British doctor whose 1998 paper fueled international fears of a link between childhood vaccines and autism had manipulated and changed the data to make his case.

An investigative report by the Sunday Times of London stated that Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues altered confidential and public records to support their claim that eight of 12 autistic children attending a routine clinic at Wakefield's hospital had developed symptoms of autism only days after they were given the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. But, almost all of the children had developed symptoms of autism well before receiving the shot, according to published reports.

Wakefield denied the allegations in the Sunday Times of London report.

Since Wakefield's original paper was published in The Lancet, numerous studies have failed to find a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In February 2008, British researchers reported in the Archives of Disease in Childhood that their large study failed to uncover a connection. The researchers based their finding on a sample of 240 children -- 98 who had been diagnosed with autism, and two comparison groups: 52 children with special educational needs who were not autistic; and 90 children who had no developmental problems."