Category:MMR vaccine and autism

This is a category for articles discussing the pseudoscientific claim that autism is caused by vaccines, the historical and ongoing controversy and conspiracy theories generated around the claim, and publications investigating and debunking it.

The link was first suggested in the early 1990s, but only came to public notice as a result of the 1998 Lancet MMR autism fraud, characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". The fraudulent research paper authored by Andrew Wakefield and published in The Lancet claimed to link the vaccine to colitis and autism spectrum disorders. An investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that Wakefield, the author of the original research paper linking the vaccine to autism, had multiple undeclared conflicts of interest, had manipulated evidence, and had broken other ethical codes.