MMR: Science and Fiction - Exploring a Vaccine Crisis [Paperback]

'A challenging discussion of the difficulties in enabling the lay public to evaluate scientific evidence'

The publication of Andrew Wakefield's work in The Lancet in 1998 inadvertently triggered a collapse of public confidence in the MMR vaccine. Six years into this health crisis, a key and much disputed part of the report was retracted. Now The Lancet's editor, Dr Richard Horton, considers the implications of this affair. Horton is an advocate of the MMR (his own child has had the triple vaccine) and here he gives an insider's account of the events surrounding this controversy. He reviews the history of the MMR vaccine and the claims about its safety, discussing why we consistently fail to debate controversial science rationally. He analyses the malign influence of financial conflicts of interest in medical research today and looks at what might be done to improve our present understanding of autism. He examines prospects for completely eradicating measles from the world, a disease which kills 700 000 children each year. Finally, he considers how a damaging episode such as this might be prevented in the future - a message that politicians, public health officials, scientists, and the media need to engage with if we are to protect the health of those unable to speak for themselves - our children. The royalties from this book will be donated to charities representing autism and child health.

Richard Horton is the editor of The Lancet, and the author of Second Opinion: Doctors, Diseases and Decisions in Modern Medicine (Granta). He lives in London.