[citation needed] Lachmann's primary research interest was the downregulation of the complement alternative pathway as a treatment for age related macular degeneration.
He has previously worked on many aspects of complement biology; on microbial subversion of the innate immune response; on the immunology of measles, on systemic lupus erythematosus and on insect sting allergies.
Lachmann has also won a Gold Medal from the European Complement Network in 1997, the Medicine and Europe Senior Prize of the Académie des Sciences de la Santé in 2003.
[citation needed] In 1999, he tried to persuade the editor of The Lancet not to publish Árpád Pusztai's research on the adverse effects of GM potatoes on rats on the grounds that it was not sound science.
[11] Lachmann was a proponent of the defence of reason and scepticism in scientific academia and on topics that extend from vaccine scares to stem cell technology and to alternative medicine.