Do we like Andrew Wakefield?
Our score: 1 out of 10. A long, loud run of vaccine claims of his own, still being pushed through films and media, with no verified good deeds to set against it.
Wakefield comes from four generations of doctors. He grew up in Bath, studied at St Mary's in London, captained the rugby team, and meant to be a surgeon before a fellowship in Toronto pulled him into lab research. He then spent about thirteen years at the Royal Free Hospital in London, chasing a theory about bowel disease and viruses.
The story everyone knows is the 1998 Lancet paper on 12 children, which floated a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. In 2010 the UK General Medical Council struck him off for serious professional misconduct, and the Lancet retracted the paper. Experts at the time stressed the ruling was about ethics and finances, not just the science, and Channel 4 reported the finding included dishonesty.
Then came the fight over the word fraud. A 2011 BMJ editorial, built on Brian Deer's reporting, alleged he skewed patients' records and stood to gain from a lawsuit against the vaccine makers. Wakefield denied it, saying there was no fraud and no hoax. He went on to sue the BMJ, its editor and Deer in Texas, and in 2014 an appeals court upheld the dismissal because Texas had no jurisdiction over them.
Harm check, in his own acts. He made the film Vaxxed, and Channel 4 reported in 2017 that recordings had him saying Trump told him vaccines cause autism. Channel 4 noted 17 large studies had found no link between MMR and autism. His 2024 film Protocol 7 puts the same camp's claims about Merck's mumps vaccine into drama, and he has told the Blaze that the MMR shot should have been split into three.
The recent bit is the comeback. MS NOW reported in November 2025 that he'd been welcomed back by the anti-vaccine crowd, with appearances on the Blaze, Infowars and the Daily Wire. He also shared a stage with Children's Health Defense, whose Austin event he spoke at. When the CDC changed its autism page, he called it “vindication”, according to MS NOW. We found nothing confirmed from 2026 itself.
The record is thin on anything a good mate would point to. A High Court judge in 2012 quashed the regulator's finding against his co-author John Walker-Smith, but noted Wakefield had abandoned his own appeal, so that ruling didn't touch his case. Supporters like Senator Ron Johnson say he deserves an apology, per MS NOW. We found no charity or kind acts to put on the other side.