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In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and colleagues published a now discredited paper in the Lancet that described 12 children with a syndrome of regressive autism and gastrointestinal disorders and linked it to the patients' recent receipt of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Since that time, multiple large studies have shown no association between MMR and autism, and, as a result, the original paper has been retracted, first by several coauthors and eventually by the Lancet. The British General Medical Council (GMC) has erased Wakefield and one of his coauthors from the medical register. Unfortunately, the publicity surrounding Wakefield's initial claim was extraordinarily effective in fueling the antivaccine movement before the fraud w…