Wakefield banned

Very good news.

A gastroenterologist who persuaded millions of parents worldwide that the vaccine used to prevent measles, mumps and rubella might cause autism has been banned from practicing medicine in his native Britain after the country's top medical group said Monday he conducted his research unethically.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield was the first researcher to publish a peer-reviewed study suggesting a connection between autism, inflammatory bowel disease and the MMR vaccine.

In February, Britain's leading medical journal, "The Lancet, "retracted Wakefield's controversial 1998 study just days after Wakefield was found guilty by a British panel of acting unethically in his research on autism.

Wakefield's study prompted a worldwide anti-vaccination movement, which has been partially blamed for an outbreak of measles that hit 15 U.S. states in the summer of 2008. American parents have gone so far as throwing "measles parties," in which they expose their children to the virus to help them build up a natural resistance to it, in an effort to avoid giving their children the vaccination. Doctors have said this practice is both dangerous and ineffective.

There's a lot of human suffering attributable to the movement this doctor led. Let's hope people wise up in the future.