When A Link Between The Mmr Vaccine And Autism Was First Mooted Government Refused To Let Parents...

[sandyRoe]

... have their children vaccinated for each seperately. Was that a mistake?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mmr-scare-doctor-andrew-wakefield-breaks-his-silence-measles-outbreak-in-wales-proves-i-was-right-8570594.html

[sandyRoe]

measles, mumps, and rubella seperately ^

[Sqad]

My opinion for what it was worth.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield's publication was flawed.......

Brown refused to tell if his child had the triple MMR or the single vaccine.

Tony Blair also refused to divulge his preferences.

The medical profession made clear the dangers of measles.

The whole affair was handled badly, both by government and the medical profession.

[sandyRoe]

It looks as though the government offered Hobson's choice, MMR or nothing. Could wealthier parents have paid to have their children vaccinated with the elements of MMR seperately?

[Sqad]

sandy....wealthy people can do "anything"...............;-)

[boxtops]

Sandy, as I recall, some people did opt for the individual vaccines.

[emmie]

some don't seem to have got their children vaccinated at all, which seems strange to me. We had ours as children, though i did catch measles, and it was jolly unpleasant, and i still bear the scars, it wasn't as bad as those who didn't get vaccinated, who can suffer terribly, and adults of course, worse still.

[Old_Geezer]

Of course it was a mistake. Their pig-headed stance which said, "We believe this triple jab is fine and not going to bend to the will of the people and allow an alternative, so go stick it", is precisely what caused the problem of undervaccination. It's not the role of government to impose but it is to represent public opinin and provide as needed. Folk have every right to has suspicions about things they come across.

[daffy654]

I had no fear of the triple vaccine myself and all 3 of my children had it. I do think the government should have offered the measles vaccine separately at the time though.

[woofgang]

what old geezer and sqad said. My niece is not rich but she decided that she didn't trust the government to make decisions about the health of her children so she and her husband decided to pay for the single vaccinations. She grew up next door to a little girl who did get a vaccination reaction and ended up with affected sight and hearing.

[sunny-dave]

If anyone is to blame for the current outbreak it is the self promoting, publicity seeking Wakefield.

His deeply flawed and discredited "research" scared the crap out of a whole generation of parents and allowed vaccination levels to fall below 'herd immunity' allowing epidemics to start.

If a single child dies in the current outbreak it should be on his conscience more thananyone elses. To hear him blaming 'the government' revolts me.

[jno]

totally agree, sunny dave. Perhaps it was a reaction to some drug that left him without a conscience, who knows.

[beso]

One of the problems of low immunisation rates is that it provides the pathogen with host opportunities to mutate potentially leading to new strains that are resistant to the vaccination and more disturbingly, the antibiotics used to cure the infection.

Wakefield is an evil man.

[beso]

Wakefield's crime was to selectively recruit particular subjects to a study such as to produce evidence of a link between vaccination and autism.

At the time he was on the payroll of an anti-vaccination organisation.

Contrary to the conspiracy theories about scientists being bribed to disguise self-interested bigotry as science, it is actually the opponents of bio-technology that are highly prone to such manipulation of the facts.

[mushroom25]

the swansea outbreak has been widely reported in the media over the past week. there are a fair proportion of comments on various news sites echoing the view that the mmr vaccine is in some way poisonous or otherwise harmful. there seem to be a good few parents who are prepared to let their kids catch measles because "all that happens is they're off-colour for a few days".

[LazyGun]

@Sandy - No, not a mistake. Where they made the mistake was not promoting the benefits and advantages of the MMR vaccine sufficiently.

Wakefield is a self-serving moneygrabber. His research work was fatally flawed, both in design and execution.
He failed to get ethical consent for his trial.
The size of the trial was just 11 children, all of whom were referred to him via a lawyer seeking to bring a class action in the US.
He was paid approximately $500,000 by the same legal firm.
His co-authors all retracted their names from his paper as critical review exposed the flaws.
The Lancet retrospectively pulled the paper, following review and further allegations of ethical misconduct.
Wakefield himself faced a GMC panel and was struck off the medical register.
Wakefield had a financial incentive in encouraging the use of single vaccines; He had patented the formulation of a measles vaccination ( or mumps, I forget which exactly now.

In sum, he made exaggerated and alarming claims about a link between the MMR vaccine and the neurological impairment of children ( autism), based upon a badly flawed case study, without obtaining consent from the Ethics Committee and the Royal Free.

The media at the time leapt upon this, and many well-meaning folks, already uneasy at being complicit in giving their kids a jab which they found painful, took fright at the thought that they may inadvertently be poisoning their children. The lead to a collapse in the numbers of kids being vaccinated. This collapse would not have been mitigated even had the single vaccines been more widely available.

And yes, i think Tony and Cherie Blairs refusal to disclose what they had done about vaccination - Leo, was it? - and the medias focus upon that, fed upon parent insecurity still further.

And this is what we are left with. Pockets around the country where the immunization rate amongst the vulnerable has fallen well below the required level of 95% to confer the protection of herd immunity, and wildfire outbreaks of diseases like this, which can spread like wildfire.

If you are interested in the chronology and the extend of the fraud perpetrated by Wakefield, you might want to read the various articles by Brian Deer, and investigative journalist from The Sunday Times, whose detailed investigation revealed the extent of Wakefields culpability in this public health scare...

http://briandeer.com/mmr-lancet.htm

[Sqad]

LazyGun

\\\Wakefield is a self-serving moneygrabber. His research work was fatally flawed, both in design and execution. \\\

and yet was accepted, after expert reviewers, for publication in one of the most prestigious medical journals....the Lancet.

What was the general public to think?

[sara3]

my kids had the MMR. I had a gp I trusted, and she said her kids had had it, and that was good enough for me.

I had a friend who was based in The Hague (work related) who travelled back to the UK to have the 3 separate jabs for her daughter, paid for privately. last time we were in touch, her daughter was showing signs of autism. years later, it was found that the doctor was giving useless jabs, he was struck off and her daughter was given more jabs.

[IggyB]

The NHS was right to continue to provide the mmr jab, it was and still is the most effective way to immunise. To provide single jabs funded by the tax payer would have been to play into the likes of Wakefields hands, cost significantly more and not provide the most effective treatment (due to those parents that don't return for the next separate injection or whose children were affected as a result of delayed immunisation).

The NHS can't bend to pressure whipped up by flawed research

[bednobs]

i am exceedingly glad i never had to make a decision at the time as it's easy to say now with hindsight what a mistake it was. My LO is a year old today, and is having the MMR next week

[bednobs]

ps, some people are still stupid now .... http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Family/Parenting/Question1156308.html