17 March 2021
A 31-year-old severely learning-disabled man can be given a COVID-19 vaccine against his father’s wishes, the Court of Protection has held in CR v SR [2021] EWCOP 19.
While acknowledging the father’s views were ‘genuinely held’, Judge Butler said his reasons had ‘no clinical evidence base’ and were based on what he believed ‘were the consequences of the MMR injection and the autism of his son’.
These views were ‘based upon the discredited theories of Dr Andrew Wakefield (advanced in 1998)’, which were formally retracted by Dr Wakefield in 2020 and resulted in him being struck off the Medical Register.
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