The doctor who linked a common childhood vaccine to autism may have been motivated by money. 

Andrew Wakefield allegedly applied for a patent for an alternative vaccine, set up a business to profit from that vaccine as well as diagnostic kits and other products.  This venture could have racked up sales of $43 million a year, as described in a three-part investigative series in the British Medical Journal.  The report in the BMJ is the second in a series that criticizes and accuses Wakefield.  

Wakefield published a study more than 10 years ago claiming that a common childhood vaccine, the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) inoculation, causes autism.  Last week, the journal’s declared that the 1998 paper in which Wakefield first suggested a connection between autism and MMR vaccine was an “elaborate fraud.”

The venture “was to be launched off the back of the vaccine scare, diagnosing a purported — and still unsubstantiated — ‘new syndrome,'” BMJ reported Tuesday.

After an investigation in 2010, Wakefield was stripped of his medical license by British authorities and the Lancet, which published his original study, retracted the paper. 

Wakefield defended his research on an internet radio show, calling the BMJ series “utter nonsense.”   He said the patent he held was not for a test or an alternative to the MMR vaccine, as BMJ reported, but an “over-the-counter nutritional supplement” that boosts the immune system.  He also dismissed the allegations that he used the cases of the 12 children in his study to promote his business venture.

“The children were not exploited,” he said. “They were seen because they were sick. They had clinical referrals. They came to us. We responded to a crisis.”

Wakefield pointed the finger back at the BMJ report author, freelance journalist Brian Deer, accusing him of being paid by the pharmaceutical industry.  Deer has stated in financial disclosure forms that he has received no such payments.

A prospectus for potential investors suggested that a test for the disorder Wakefield dubbed “autistic enterocolitis” could produce as much as 28 million pounds ($43 million U.S.) in revenue, the journal reports.