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Your editor is sometimes wheeled out by the media as a critic of
government policy on MMR, but that does not alter his strong support
for protecting children against measles. The latter is what the UK
government is failing to do, as immunisation rates against measles,
mumps and rubella (MMR) fall to 80% or less, making a measles
epidemic more possible. The problem is that officials prefer
compulsion - unacknowledged, of course - to reason, as they try to
maintain herd immunity.
The evidence for a link between MMR and childhood autism is very
weak, but is not dispelled by small-scale retrospective epidemiology
undertaken by fervent supporters of MMR. Prospective studies are
needed for a true assessment of MMR risks. Most parents know that
the risks are low, but may also understand that benefit to their
child is unlikely: an unimmunised child has an annual risk of a
damaging measles episode of less than 1 in 100,000. So some wish to
give their children single vaccines, without the risk of MMR,
thereby protecting them and maintaining herd immunity.
Government officials think differently. Single vaccines are
dangerous, they say, because acquisition of immunity is delayed.
This is false. Were this government not trying to make single
vaccines unavailable, immunity against measles could be acquired
just as fast as with MMR: the same measles strain is used in each.
Immunity to rubella in infancy is less important: the disease is
only a danger to pregnant women; and no one seriously thought it
worth immunising against mumps until manufacturers provided it in a
combined vaccine. Tellingly, when the government ran a mass
vaccination against measles in 1994, they used a specially made
combination of measles and rubella, rather than the readily
available MMR.
Official attempts to compel the use of MMR are not working, even
though some GPs are helping by giving MMR without parental consent
as children are brought for Hib injections in another catch-up
campaign. The need for a second Hib injection is incidentally
another example of the failure to study new vaccines adequately
before use.
What the government must now do is to reinstate legal aid for
parents who say their children were damaged by MMR. If there is no
evidence that MMR caused the damage, what better way to make that
clear to all parents than to have the pros and cons aired in a
public trial. To prevent the trial by withdrawing legal aid just
adds fuel to the suspicion that there is evidence for the parents'
claim which the government fears to have publicised.
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