The Observer reported last week on a 'big surge' in the number of children in Britain with autism and included the claim that the rise might be linked to the use of the MMR vaccine. This caused an immediate outcry within the scientific and medical community.
An unpublished report leaked to the paper showed that the number of children in Britain with autism could be as many as one in 58. The document had been the work of seven academics at Cambridge University, two of whom, the paper said, believed privately that the surprisingly high figure 'could be linked to the controversial MMR vaccine'.
Our story caused considerable controversy. Some said it would stir up alarm on the eve of the General Medical Council's disciplinary hearing into the case of Dr Andrew Wakefield, who faces charges relating to his conduct during an MMR research project in the 1990s, and, it was suggested, the two 'dissenters' quoted in the piece were not 'leaders in their field' as claimed by the paper.
Furthermore, both had received payments for expert evidence offered at a now-abandoned court case against MMR manufacturers and one was currently working for a US clinic associated with Dr Wakefield, who had given an exclusive interview in the same issue of the paper to the same reporter.
Equally serious was the charge from the Science Media Centre that The Observer had conflated two issues: the apparent rise in autism figures and the MMR debate. The leaked document dealt in statistics, but not causes, as the story made clear, and yet the paper had reported the private views of two of its authors, both of whom were experts in autism, but were not vaccinologists.
I put these points to the reporter and to our head of news who began by denying absolutely a further accusation put to me by one correspondent: that there was a deal done to get the story on the front page in return for the exclusive interview.
The head of news said: 'I believe it was legitimate to include the thoughts of two of the authors of the study. We didn't conflate the two issues; the issues are already conflated.
'We worked hard to give a non-incendiary, balanced view. I believe we had to give the readers all the information we had. After all, they would ask, "Could MMR be a factor?"'
The document, which is entitled a 'Final Report' to the Shirley Foundation, the funding body which paid £300,000 for the research, is dated 15 November 2005 and showed the 1 in 58 figure to be the key headline finding.
The reporter said he knew of the payments made to the academics for the expert report they co-wrote for the court case in 2003.
He maintained that this report bore out what the paper had said: that they both believed that MMR could be a factor in autism emerging in small numbers of children.
He accepted that he should have made that plain in the story, along with the current links to Dr Wakefield. He also agreed that lower, less alarming figures of one in 74 and one in 94 found in the report should also have been in the text.
And the central point, in my view, is that the leaked story of the apparent rise in the prevalence of autism was a perfectly legitimate and accurate story in its own right, which did not need the introduction of the MMR theory.
