Frameshift

How does a preventable disease, once eradicated from a modern nation, worm its way back into the populace? Answer: undermine the people’s confidence in the cure. Today on Frameshift, we examine the scare in the United Kingdom about the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine – a controversy that lasted over a decade and brought measles back into circulation. We spread the blame for the debacle across three perpetrators: Andrew Wakefield, who started the controversy with a fraudulent research paper; media organizations, who largely misrepresented the facts; and the editors of the Lancet, who published the study and put more effort into saving face than correcting the record.