Study Linking Vaccine to Autism Pulled

So a 12-year-old controversy over whether vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella leads to autism has been settled. Well, not quite.

Even as shares of major vaccine makers like Merck & Co. rallied on news of a study being discredited, vaccination opponents pressed on, equating the move to burning books. Merck rose $1.24, or 3 percent, to $39.54 in New York Stock Exchange trading.

The British medical journal Lancet retracted a study published in 1998 by U.K. researcher Andrew Wakefield after the country's General Medical Council (GMC) determined that Dr. Wakefield had been dishonest. The study fueled antivaccine sentiment among parents for more than a decade in the U.K. and here in the U.S.

The Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, told the Guardian that he decided to pull the study after the GMC's recent ruling.

"It was utterly clear, without any ambiguity at all, that the statements in the paper were utterly false," he said. "I feel I was deceived."

But the stock rally for Merck and European rivals GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Novartis AG, and Sanofi-Aventis SA may be premature. (Their American shares all rose more than 1 percent.)

Many parents feel strongly about the risk of vaccinations, and that's not a sentiment that's going to change overnight.

One U.S. group, the National Vaccine Information Center, posted this on Facebook today: "Probably the most shocking event that has occurred as a result of the GMC verdict is that today the Lancet retracted the 1998 Wakefield et al article from the public record. It will be as if it was never published. It is, in effect, a burning of the books and removing it from history."