In February 1998, Wakefield wrote a research paper that was published in the medical journal Lancet. The basic idea of the study was that he'd studied the cases of 12 anonymous children who were admitted to a London hospital between July 19... Let's remember, the sample size is... Twelve. Twelve! His paper alleged that two-thirds of the children experienced, quote, regressive autism, which is to say, for example, language skills that were there before were actually lost in the child. His paper asserted that many of these symptoms were seen within 14 days of getting the measles, mumps, and rubella shot, with the average being 6.3 days after the shot. The study caused a severe immediate backlash against the vaccines, and the damage that the paper did is almost impossible to put into words. Public trust was eroded, the anti-vaccination movement, previously just a completely fringe phenomenon, became more mainstream and emboldened, and safeguards of public health were jeopardized.