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Dr Harris, and former health spokesman who sits on the
British Medical Association's medical ethics committee,
told the Commons during a debate that the design of the
study eventually published in The Lancet in 1998 had been
altered after it was authorised by the Royal Free
Hospital's ethics panel.
He said Dr Wakefield, who has also been accused of failing
to declare a conflict of interest raised by a £55,000
payment, did not clear the changes with the ethics
committee.
Dr Harris said this called the ethical justification of the
work into question, and suggested that autistic children
were subjected to risky and unnecessary lumbar punctures -
in which spinal fluid is removed with a needle while the
child is under sedation.
In the debate on Monday night Dr Harris said the Royal
Free's ethics committee may also be guilty of "failure and
incompetence", as it appeared not to have consulted an
independent outside expert before approving the research.