More on WAKEFIELD'S DECEPTIONS

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...041385,00.html

Dr Harris, and former health spokesman who sits on the British Medical
Association's medical ethics committee, told the Commons during a debate
that the design of the study eventually published in The Lancet in 1998 had
been altered after it was authorised by the Royal Free Hospital's ethics
panel.

He said Dr Wakefield, who has also been accused of failing to declare a
conflict of interest raised by a £55,000 payment, did not clear the changes
with the ethics committee.

Dr Harris said this called the ethical justification of the work into
question, and suggested that autistic children were subjected to risky and
unnecessary lumbar punctures - in which spinal fluid is removed with a
needle while the child is under sedation.

In the debate on Monday night Dr Harris said the Royal Free's ethics
committee may also be guilty of "failure and incompetence", as it appeared
not to have consulted an independent outside expert before approving the
research.