Opinion Vaccines are not to blame

January 13, 2017 at 6:17 p.m. EST

BALTIMORE, MD - DECEMBER 6: Pharmacy Technician Sandra Crutcher prepares a hypodermic for a volunteer participating in a Zika vaccine clinical trial at the University of Maryland school of medicine Center for Vaccine Development, on December, 06, 2016 in Baltimore, MD. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Regarding the Jan. 11 front-page article "Vaccine skeptic says Trump asked him to lead panel on inoculations":

My heart goes out to any parent whose child has an autism spectrum disorder. I can empathize with their response to its devastating impact, but the truth is vaccines are not to blame.

In January 2010, Britain's General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield, the original proponent of the theory that vaccines and autism are linked, guilty of more than 30 counts of clinical and scientific misconduct, including studying children without the approval of a human-use committee, subjecting some to lumbar punctures (spinal taps), failing to disclose attempts to profit from his research and altering medical records to falsify his results.

After the council revoked his medical license, the journal the Lancet retracted his article and the British Medical Journal published articles condemning his "research." In light of these events and subsequent studies, creating an "Autism Commission" would be utterly misguided.

Edward N. Squire Jr., Fredericksburg