Republican presidential candidates, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have made irresponsible comments about vaccines at a time when measles has reappeared in the United States. Their remarks call into question their judgment and their fitness for higher office.Washington Post Editorial Board

Mr. Christie, visiting a medical research laboratory in Cambridge, England, said that he, too, had vaccinated his children, but “I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”

Brian Deer exposed the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school
The paper was published in the Lancet on 28 February 1998. It was retracted on 2 February 2010.2 Authored by Andrew Wakefield, John Walker-Smith, and 11 others from the Royal Free medical school, London, it reported on 12 developmentally challenged children,3 and triggered a decade long public health scare.
Unknown to Mr 11, Wakefield was working on a lawsuit,7 for which he sought a bowel-brain “syndrome” as its centrepiece. Claiming an undisclosed £150 (€180, $230) an hour through a Norfolk solicitor named Richard Barr, he had been confidentially 8 put on the payroll two years before the paper was published, eventually grossing him £435 643, plus expenses.JB

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347