Andrew Wakefield

Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a British former physician and academic who was struck off the medical register due to his involvement in the Lancet MMR autism fraud, a 1998 study that falsely claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. He has subsequently become known for anti-vaccination activism. Publicity around the 1998 study caused a sharp decline in vaccination uptake, leading to a number of outbreaks of measles around the world. He was a surgeon on the liver transplant programme at the Royal Free Hospital in London and became senior lecturer and honorary consultant in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free and University College School of Medicine. He resigned from his positions there in 2001, "by mutual agreement", then moved to the United States. In 2004, Wakefield began working at the Thoughtful House research center in Austin, Texas, serving as Executive Director there until February 2010, when he resigned in the wake of findings against him by the British General Medical Council.