Fear mongering at its worst. I would imagine the lawyers are profiting greatly too from all the lawsuits.
Are you familiar with the history of the Wakefield fraud?
Andrew Wakefield was trying to run a double scam.
For one, he had an investment in a company that produced single component measles vaccine. However, it is difficult to sell parents on the idea that they should vaccinate for each component separately when they can get three vaccines in a single shot with the MMR. So, if he could "establish" that the 3-in-1 shot is dangerous, he would have "scientific evidence" to convince parents to use the single-component vaccine (and thereby profit).
The other part of his scam was that he was working with a lawyer who specialized in medical malpractice suits. On that front, if he could show "scientific evidence" that the MMR vaccine causes autism, then he stood to profit by acting as an "expert witness" in trials against vaccine manufacturers, medical facilities, and doctors, nominatively filed on behalf of parents with autistic children.
It is greatly unfortunate that the Lancet, which is a highly respected journal, fell for the scam despite what should have been a rigorous peer-review process. The "study" published is full of design flaws and very bad interpretation of the (scant and questionable) data. It should have never been published. In addition, the manipulations he did to the infant subjects of his "study" were never reviewed for scientific merit or for compliance with ethical standards by any committee.
Most academic papers that are retracted are removed from electronic copies of journals. If you try to look one up, you see nothing more than a notice that it has been retracted. In the case of the Wakefield paper, the retracted article is still available, but it clearly states that it is retracted--I think it even has a watermark "RETRACTED" across each page. My guess is that Lancet left the article because of its implications--disappearing it in the way that most retracted articles disappear would only feed into the anti-vax conspiracies.