Autism ReseARch

welve years ago, a now infamous and retracted paper appeared in the L ancet1 and launched a health scare. In it, researchers at the Royal Free medical school in London reported on 12 chil-dren with developmental disorders, and linked their problems to MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccination. It was the proposed link between the vaccine and “regressive ” autism that caught the head-lines and sparked alarm. But the paper also claimed to have discovered a new gut pathology, reported in 11 of the 12 children, which the lead author, Andrew Wakefield, an academic gastro-enterologist, would dub “autistic enterocolitis.