Former science chief: 'MMR fears coming true'
By SUE CORRIGAN, Mail on Sunday
11:09am 5th February 2006
The Government is also considering flu jabs for under-twos - not to protect
the children, but adults they may infect
A former Government medical officer responsible for deciding whether
medicines are safe has accused the Government of "utterly inexplicable
complacency" over the MMR triple vaccine for children.
Dr Peter Fletcher, who was Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of
Health, said if it is proven that the jab causes autism, "the refusal by
governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the
greatest scandals in medical history".
He added that after agreeing to be an expert witness on drug-safety trials
for parents' lawyers, he had received and studied thousands of documents
relating to the case which he believed the public had a right to see.
He said he has seen a "steady accumulation of evidence" from scientists
worldwide that the measles, mumps and rubella jab is causing brain damage in
certain children.
But he added: "There are very powerful people in positions of great
authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and
careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to
protect themselves."
His warning follows reports that the Government is this week planning to
announce the addition of a jab against pneumococcal meningitis for babies,
probably from next April. It is also considering flu jabs for under-twos -
not to protect the children, but adults they may infect.
In the late Seventies, Dr Fletcher served as Chief Scientific Officer at the
DoH and Medical Assessor to the Committee on Safety of Medicines, meaning he
was responsible for deciding if new vaccines were safe.
He first expressed concerns about MMR in 2001, saying safety trials before
the vaccine's introduction in Britain were inadequate.
Now he says the theoretical fears he raised appear to be becoming reality.
He said the rising tide of autism cases and growing scientific understanding
of autism-related bowel disease have convinced him the MMR vaccine may be to
blame.
"Clinical and scientific data is steadily accumulating that the live measles
virus in MMR can cause brain, gut and immune system damage in a subset of
vulnerable children," he said. "There's no one conclusive piece of
scientific evidence, no 'smoking gun', because there very rarely is when
adverse drug reactions are first suspected. When vaccine damage in very
young children is involved, it is harder to prove the links.
"But it is the steady accumulation of evidence, from a number of respected
universities, teaching hospitals and laboratories around the world, that
matters here. There's far too much to ignore. Yet government health
authorities are, it seems, more than happy to do so."
'Why isn't the Government taking this massive public health problem more
seriously?'
Dr Fletcher said he found "this official complacency utterly inexplicable"
in the light of an explosive worldwide increase in regressive autism and
inflammatory bowel disease in children, which was first linked to the live
measles virus in the MMR jab by clinical researcher Dr Andrew Wakefield in
1998.
"When scientists first raised fears of a possible link between mad cow
disease and an apparently new, variant form of CJD they had detected in just
20 or 30 patients, everybody panicked and millions of cows were
slaughtered," said Dr Fletcher.
"Yet there has been a tenfold increase in autism and related forms of brain
damage over the past 15 years, roughly coinciding with MMR's introduction,
and an extremely worrying increase in childhood inflammatory bowel diseases
and immune disorders such as diabetes, and no one in authority will even
admit it's happening, let alone try to investigate the causes."
He said there was "no way" the tenfold leap in autistic children could be
the result of better recognition and definitional changes, as claimed by
health authorities.
"It is highly likely that at least part of this increase is a vaccinerelated
problem." he said. "But whatever it is, why isn't the Government taking this
massive public health problem more seriously?"
His outspokenness will infuriate health authorities, who have spent millions
of pounds shoring up confidence in MMR since Dr Wakefield's 1998 statement.
But Dr Fletcher said the Government is undermining public confidence in
vaccine safety by refusing to do in-depth clinical research to rule out
fears of MMR damage to children.
He added that the risks of brain and gut damage from MMR injections seem to
be much higher in children where a brother or sister has diabetes, an immune
disorder.
"That is a very strong clinical signal that some children are
immunologically at risk from MMR," he said. "Why is the Government not
investigating it further - diverting some of the millions of pounds spent on
advertising and PR campaigns to promote MMR uptake into detailed clinical
research instead?"
Now retired after a distinguished 40-year career in science and medicine in
Britain, Europe and the US, Dr Fletcher said that without such research,
health authorities could not possibly rule out fears about MMR.
He said: "It is entirely possible that the immune systems of a small
minority simply cannot cope with the challenge of the three live viruses in
the MMR jab, and the ever-increasing vaccine load in general."
He said he had decided to speak out because of his deep concern at the lack
of treatment for autistic children with bowel disease, as revealed in The
Mail on Sunday two weeks ago.
He called the sudden termination of legal aid to parents of allegedly
vaccine-damaged children in late 2003 "a monstrous injustice". After
agreeing to be a witness for the parents, he received thousands of documents
relating to the case.
"Now, it seems, unless the parents force the Government to restore legal
aid, much of this revealing evidence may never come out," he said.
The Department of Health said: "MMR remains the best protection against
measles, mumps and rubella. It is recognised by the World Health
Organisation as having an outstanding safety record and there is a wealth of
evidence showing children who receive the MMR vaccine are no more at risk of
autism than those who don't."
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I have 5 sons. I didn't inoculate them until they were much older. They did
catch some serious diseases, but were not terribly ill with it. I just
couldn't bring myself to load my infants up with all these inoculations.
When they were older, I felt their body could handle the cocktail of jabs,
though some they didn't need as they had already gone through the illness.
- Joy, Wembley, UK
I paid for my grand daughter to have the single dose jabs. I am beginning to
suspect it was a couple of hundred pounds extremely well spent.
Thank God for people like Doctor Wakefield who make us think instead of
being obedient little drones subjecting our children to goodness knows what
to save face for a bunch of egoistic politicians.
Did Tony Blair ever confess whether or not his own child had the full MMR
jab?
- Ruth Abbott, Whitby, North Yorkshire
We have a 17 year old son who has Asperger Syndrome and also has A.D.H.D.
and had the MMR vaccine. We also have a 15 year old daughter who also had
the MMR vaccine and has no autistic tendencies.
If the MMR vaccine is related to autism, due to some children not being able
to cope with the strength, then this would also relate to people with
Asperger Syndrome and Symatic Pragmatic Disorder as these are also
classified as being within the autistic spectrum.
- Donna Blundell, Birmingham, UK
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My son has had MMR jab, says Brown (in dig at Blair)
By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent
(Filed: 07/02/2006)
Gordon Brown yesterday made it clear that his two-year-old son John had been
given the MMR jab after the publication of a report showing that, in some
parts of the country, as few as one in nine children were being given the
triple vaccination.
The Chancellor said parents had obligations to the rest of society to
protect children from disease.
Some may interpret his comments as a dig at Tony Blair, who has repeatedly
refused to say whether his five-year-old son Leo has had the vaccination
against measles, mumps and rubella on the grounds that it would be an
infringement of his privacy.
Mr Brown said that in some areas of public health, such as obesity and child
vaccination, personal responsibility should play an important part.
During a discussion about public rights and responsibilities he said it was
incumbent on parents to take into account the interests of others in society
by making sure their children did not spread disease.
Referring to the importance of children being given the jab, he said: "It's
not just an optional extra."
Sources close to Mr Brown insisted that the comments were not intended as a
criticism of the Prime Minister.
While Mr Blair has refused to answer the question directly on many
occasions, four years ago he told Jimmy Young on his BBC radio programme:
"We certainly would not ask anybody to say or advise people to have this
vaccine if we thought it was the wrong thing for our child."
Vaccination rates fell dramatically following prominent media coverage of a
study eight years ago suggesting that the MMR jab was linked to autism.
Since then the paper has been widely discredited, and Richard Horton, the
editor of The Lancet, the journal that published the work, has said the
research, by Dr Andrew Wakefield, was "entirely flawed" and should never
have been published.
A report by the Chartered Society of Physiotheraphy published yesterday
showed uptake of the MMR jab varied widely across the country, with rates in
some parts of the country still worryingly low.
Figures from the Department of Health for 2004-05 showed that in
Westminster, London, just 11.7 per cent of children were immunised by their
fifth birthday.
This compared with a high of 91.1 per cent in Chelmsford in Essex, while the
average across England was 73.3 per cent.
Vaccination relies on high uptake rates to be effective and parents who say
they have had their children protected with single jabs sometimes fail to
complete the course of injections.
Doctors are concerned that those not giving their children the MMR jab are
putting other children and pregnant women at risk.
Physiotherapists are worried because the long-term effects of catching
measles, mumps or rubella include arthritis, encephalitis - inflammation of
the brain - and arthralgia, which is pain in a joint caused by inflammation.
London is lagging behind the rest of the country, with 57.2 per cent of
children having the jab before they are five. The region with the highest
uptake was the North East, with 80.4 per cent of children vaccinated.
Sarah Bazin, of the CSP, said: "Measles, mumps and rubella are highly
contagious diseases and can have devastating long-term consequences.
"This study demonstrates the absolute necessity of getting health care
messages correct.
"While the research that sparked controversy over the MMR jab has been
discredited, uptake remains patchy across the country, showing that, when
panic and confusion reign, public health can be seriously compromised."
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