MMR jab doctor contests GMC ruling

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Professor John Walker-Smith is appealing against the General Medical Council's (GMC) determination that he was guilty of serious professional misconduct.

He is being supported by the parents of many children with autism and bowel disease seen by him at the Royal Free Hospital, north London, up to his retirement in 2001.

In a hearing expected to take 10 days, his lawyers are asking Mr Justice Mitting, sitting at London's High Court, to rule that he was denied a fair trial.

In May 2010, Prof Walker-Smith lost his license to practice along with Dr Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who triggered a global scare about the MMR vaccine.

A GMC fitness to practise panel found both guilty of misconduct over the way the research was conducted. The panel's verdict followed 217 days of deliberation, making it the longest disciplinary case in the GMC's 152-year history.

It came 12 years after a 1998 paper in the Lancet suggested a link between the vaccine, bowel disease and autism - resulting in a plunge in the number of children having the vaccination.

In 2004, the Lancet announced a partial retraction, and 10 of the 13 authors disowned it.

Dr Wakefield was the paper's chief author and Professor Walker-Smith the then head of the department of paediatric gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital in north London, where the research was carried out.

Grounds of appeal relied on by Professor Walker-Smith include assertions that the disciplinary proceedings were "unfair and produced an unjust result".