LONDON (AP/Reuters/Hamodia) – A major British medical journal yesterday retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease. That study was the original source cited by parents worldwide in their decision not to vaccinate their children.

The retraction by The Lancet comes a day after a competing medical journal, BMJ, issued an embargoed commentary calling for The Lancet to formally retract the study. The commentary was to have been published today.

“We fully retract this paper from the published record,” Lancet editors said in a statement yesterday.

The BMJ commentary said once the study by British surgeon and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues appeared in 1998 in The Lancet, “the arguments were considered by many to be proven and the ghastly social drama of the demon vaccine took on a life of its own.”

His assertion caused one of the biggest medical rows in a generation and led to a steep drop in the number of vaccinations in the United States, Britain and other parts of Europe, prompting a rise in cases of measles. Subsequent studies have found no proof that the vaccine is connected to autism, though some parents are still wary of the shot.