The Wakefield Hearing - Overdue and Totally Justified

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 13th Jul 2007

On the first day of the hearing - Monday 16th July - into the allegations of professional misconduct of Dr Andrew Wakefield and two of his co-researchers at the Royal Free into the potential link between the MMR vaccination and Autism, Dr Evan Harris MP, the medical ethics campaigner who helped expose the ethical failures alleged in this research and who raised his concerns with the GMC, said,

"It is outrageous and unfounded to claim that these hearings are part of a witch-hunt against a maverick. This is not about whether MMR causes autism - there is a scientific consensus on the absence of any good evidence that it does."

Dr Harris, Liberal Democrat Science Spokesman and a long-time former member of a research ethics committee, continued:

"These hearings are about whether medical researchers have a duty to disclose conflicts of interest to their research subjects and to publishers & reviewers of their work, whether we insist that children can not be subject to painful distressing and invasive procedures without it being in their clinical interests and whether fundamental ethical norms should be grossly violated by researchers for scientific or more base motives"

Dr Harris, referring to concerns he raised in a debate in March 2004, said:

"When these hearings are over the Government will have to ensure that there is an independent investigation to look at the wider implications of failures of ethical oversight and the failure of peer review, as they said they would consider doing when I raised my concerns about the ethical conduct of the Royal Free Team in the Commons."

Dr Harris met the GMC to urge them to add ethical violations in the list of charges in this case:

"I am pleased that the charges against these doctors focus mainly on the alleged breaches of ethical research conduct since children are entitled to the highest protection from researchers who may be over-exuberant or frankly fraudulent."

"Spurious claims to be a maverick voice, the use of a slick PR machine and followers in the media must not allow someone to claim victimisation when confronted with the gross violations of ethical paediatric research and publication practise that are alleged here."