A study was published in The Lancet in 1998 which indirectly resulted in the first every British outbreak of measles in decades, and the reason for this was that the research argued that symptoms of autism could be aggravated via the usage of the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine.

Since that study, a whole lot of parents and activists movements have mushroomed, including the popular Jenny McCarthy, who were convinced that their children had autism because of "nefarious pharmaceutical companies" who were masking the absolute truths about the findings in order to sell more vaccines.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., activist and lawyers had, in 2005, published writing in Rolling Stone accusing that there was a "conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies and the U. S. government to repress evidence of the vaccine-autism connection".

Very recently, however, The Lancet took the study back, despite the fact that the conclusions of the research were rejected by the scientific community several years ago. The retracting of the study, however, will do little to ease the concerns of parents who have long been blaming the vaccine for their children's autism.