Andrew Wakefield Confronts Twitter “Fact-check” Smears and the Infamous Lancet Paper The Lancet alleged Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 paper concluded MMR vaccines cause autism. “So not only did I not say that, but we said actually quite the opposite,” responded Wakefield. The paper stated, “This does not prove an association.” “Things have changed,” he stated, “because I now do believe sincerely that [the] MMR vaccine causes autism. Why? Because ... the CDC, to their credit, tested that hypothesis [autism-vaccine link], and then, having found that it was exactly right in their study, they covered it up, destroyed the documents,” Wakefield detailed. “And 14 years later, William Thompson [senior CDC scientist] came forward, confessed that he could no longer live with this knowledge, and admitted to the fraud.”