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VERY INTERESTING!!
Please read! As a parent of a child with autistic features, developmental delay, & other health issues, this issue is near & dear to my heart. I have looked & looked, researched & researched, chatted with our docs, etc. AND have found ZERO concrete evidence of a LINK between autism & vaccinations. The doctor (a GI surgeon, btw) who originally made the claim that mercury led to autism is now under investigation in Great Britain by the government there. PLEASE READ!!!
Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2230936_1,00.ht ml
The major highlights of the article:
As health chiefs last week reported the worst outbreaks of measles across Britain in 20 years, slow progress was being made in bringing to justice the doctor who sparked the MMR scare.
At the high court in London, lawyers for the General Medical Council (GMC) gave the first public hearing to disciplinary charges against Andrew Wakefield, whose scientific paper published eight years ago caused millions to shun the vaccination for fear that their children might contract autism.
The charges against Wakefield, 50, are some of the most extensive seen. Timothy Dutton QC told Mr Justice Silberman that the GMC, the body that regulates doctors, was considering 10 counts of serious professional misconduct.
They include publishing “inadequately founded” research, obtaining funding “improperly” and subjecting children to “unnecessary and invasive investigations” without proper ethical approval.
But unknown to the Lancet, the medical profession or the public at the time, the parents of these children were rather special: in 11 of the 12 cases they were suing the manufacturers of MMR — and Wakefield was being paid by a firm of solicitors to help them.
Wakefield had been paid by solicitors attempting to sue the vaccine’s manufacturers — and that some of the children’s parents were also litigants, with an understandable axe to grind.
“There was never one shred of verified evidence in his work,” said Brent Taylor, head of child health at the Royal Free’s medical school, and a noted researcher on vaccine safety. “There was absolutely no basis whatsoever for his claims.” .
“What makes measles so difficult to stamp out is the extraordinary infectivity of the virus,” said Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. “Each person who catches the disease will spread it, on average, to another 15-20 people in an unvaccinated population.”
This is a GREAT editorial from the London Times. Here’s the link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2231905,00.html
White, middle-class, loving mums. And their stupitidy could kill your child
Cristina Odone
It isn’t enough that my daughter has had her MMR jab. Her friends must have them too
I want to go up to the woman and shake her: do you realise you risk hurting, even killing, your son and those he comes in contact with? Measles can kill, mumps can lead to infertility and deafness, and a pregnant woman infected with rubella has an 83 per cent chance of giving birth to a child with some deformity. Yet parents such as her get away with it. They are middle-class and clean-cut, well meaning and well spoken. We indulge them because they assure us, ever so eloquently, that they are motivated by parental love. We cut them slack because we are convinced that even irrational fear, when in such cosy packaging, cannot have dangerous consequences.
We are wrong. Last week the Health Protection Agency reported the worst incidence of measles in 20 years. Three months ago the first child in 14 years was killed by the virus. Pockets of infection have surfaced in Surrey and in Yorkshire. We face a real health scare, because rogue parents fell for a bogus health scare — the one linking the MMR vaccine to autism.
It is eight years since Andrew Wakefield began agitating against the MMR jab. In that time he managed to persuade hundreds of thousands to keep their children from taking part in the immunisation programme. Dr Wakefield, a former gut surgeon, was an extraordinarily convincing spokesman: when he made public his claims at a press conference at the Royal Free he throbbed with messianic ardour and heartfelt concern for those poor innocents whom the State wished to inject with poison.
When he faced critics who pointed out that he built his thesis on a skewed sample of only 12 children, he played the medical martyr who risked his career for the good of others.
Anxious parents, unsure of their science and suspicious of the nanny state, were Dr Wakefield’s apostles. They rushed to spread his message and live out his commandments.
Boden-wearing mothers and SUV-driving fathers refused to do the authorities’ bidding and vowed to protect their children from the evil that would be perpetrated against them.
The Boden sundress and capable car determined the reaction that these parents aroused. Countless mothers and fathers shivered at the images of a middle-class couple looking on as their autistic son failed to show any sign of recognition. Even some doctors took seriously their descriptions of a terrifying fear and an all-engulfing guilt: these people were obviously educated, perhaps even knew something of biology, so their experience and worries could not be dismissed out of hand. The media loved to feature their harrowing tales, relishing the contrast between these couples’ orderly and well-heeled existence and the dark, primitive fear that prompted them to rebel against the authorities. As for the Government, the Blairites didn’t dare take on this powerful and influential constituency, and opted out of forcing MMR upon all school children — a surefire method adopted already in America, where a child’s inoculation records must be presented before admission to any school.
Now: imagine the brouhaha if the Wakefield weirdos had been not middle-class whites but, let’s say, Muslims. Other parents would have been up in arms, raging against the superstitious claptrap that risked landing their little one in hospital. The media would have wallowed in coverage of semi-literate households where a patriarch brandishing a well-thumbed copy of the Koran chased away the doctors, social services and all other Western busybodies.
The analogy is hardly preposterous. When imams in Nigeria managed to persuade tens of thousands of followers that they should boycott the polio vaccine because it was actually a Western plot to render them infertile, the ensuing outcry was almost racist in its condescension: what, don’t they know any better? But the same can be asked of the middle-class parents who joined the anti-MMR crusade.
Dr Wakefield failed to disclose that the parents of 11 of the 12 children in his original study were suing the manufacturers of the MMR vaccine; and that he had been hired to help them by a firm of solicitors. Since then scientific evidence against Dr Wakefield’s findings has been conclusive: epidemiological and virological studies, including one that examined half a million children born in Denmark, found absolutely no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Yet middle-class mummies and daddies still wear opposition to MMR like a badge of honour.
The General Medical Council last week, quite rightly, started disciplinary proceedings against Dr Wakefield. But while he could be struck off the medical register, vilified as the Abu Hamza of the medical profession, what of his followers? We need to deal with the hysterical middle-class parents who, in the name of love, risk dragging Britain back to an era of high child mortality. The answer lies in education, education, education: we cannot force parents to become scientifically literate, but we can ensure that their children’s attendance of schools, state or private, depends on their having had a complete set of jabs. Only then will the well-clad, well-heeled troops turn round their SUVs and beat a retreat.
Finally, aside from not being able to find solid proof of a link (& trust me, I was so concerned for Emma and having her shots, especially MMR), the benefits of the MMR are SO vital. Emma has been in the hospital a few times since she was born, she is at a doctor or specialist on average once per week, therapy 2 times per week, & then the general public as often as anyone else with two kids is! Anyway, the risk is REAL for Emma, as far as contracting measles or mumps. It is dangerous for ANY child, but for Emma, it would be even more devastating. We fight each day to keep Emma’s health in good standing. Having to tackle a virus that could EASILY be avoided on top of her other health issues, is an absolute horror to fathom.
Lauren 2006-6-26 17:26:8
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