The Appeal of Prof John Walker-Smith Against the United Kingdom General Medical Council (Wakefield Case) - AGE OF AUTISM
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On Monday the appeal begins of Prof John Walker-Smith against the decisions of the GMC as one of the three doctors in the Wakefield case. It should be stressed that Prof Walker-Smith’s appeal is purely on his own behalf and that Andrew Wakefield was forced to withdraw from the appeal due to cost. A third doctor, Prof Simon Murch, was permitted by the GMC to return to work on the basis that he was only Prof Walker-Smith’s junior at the time.
A key issue at the GMC hearing was the prosecution claim that the Wakefield 1998 Lancet paper was in reality a study that had been commissioned by the UK Legal Aid Board relating to pending litigation over the MMR. The three doctors, on the other hand, contended that the projected LAB study was never performed, and that Lancet paper was “an early report” of cases seen on the basis of clinical need, as indeed it had stated. Paradoxically, the GMC panel also found the doctors to be guilty of breaching the terms of the LAB protocol in virtually every respect, instead of accepting the plausible evidence of the doctors that it was simply not the same paper. The panel found:
“The Panel has heard that ethical approval had been sought and granted for other trials and it has been specifically suggested that Project 172-96 was never undertaken and that in fact, the Lancet 12 children’s investigations were clinically indicated and the research parts of those clinically justified investigations were covered by Project 162-95. In the light of all the available evidence, the Panel rejected this proposition.”
