I only had to wait a day to get my answer. According to news sources at Reuters and as reported by NPR the next day, “It later emerged that Wakefield had been taking money from a lawyer suing vaccine makers…” .  Baffled, I did more digging. It turns out a British investigative reporter for the Sunday Times, Brian Deer, has been tracking and covering this topic for years.

Following the money, what Mr. Deer discovered was that Dr. Wakefield initially took payments (from Richard Barr, Esq.) of over ₤55,000 ($85,000) to undertake the autism/MMR vaccine study.  Dr. Wakefield was then paid ₤150 ($234) per hour to conduct supporting research, resulting over the years in payments of over ₤430,000 ($670,000).  Why? Barr is an attorney attempting to construct an international class-action lawsuit on behalf of clients whose children have autism.  Barr could make a lot of money with this unfounded frivolous lawsuit, and he needed substantial evidence.

Mr. Deer’s site is an exhaustive link-citation to newspaper and journal articles from 2004-2010 on this issue.  A fine resource.

(Oh Jenny, how could you lie to me…not only is there no autism link, but lots of dirty money was involved…I’m so crushed!)