When the now-debunked paper by Andrew Wakefield linking vaccines to autism was published in 1998, American vaccine developer Peter Hotez immediately questioned its findings. “The paper never made much sense to me,” he said. “We already knew that the changes in the brains of kids with autism are pretty pervasive. And I couldn't imagine a mechanism by which a vaccine could cause autism.” Hotez had more at stake than being in the business of finding new vaccines. He had a six-year-old daughter on