Reports Deepen MMR Dilemma: More on Dubious Finnish Study
[In the Sunday Herald. Thanks again to R. Miles.]
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/newsi.hts?section=News&story_id=13747
Conservative MP Julie Kirkbride is faced with a difficult dilemma. Her three- month-old son Angus will eventually be sent a little card asking him
to attend his local clinic for a vaccine to protect him against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). As a politician, Kirkbride is more than aware of claims of a link between the jab and autism and bowel disorders. She has called for single vaccines to be made available and has said that she will "think long and hard" before giving her son the MMR.
The same dilemma is facing thousands of parents across the country. Hundreds have already been driven to a private doctor in Edinburgh who has managed to administer single vaccines by importing them from France. Others look to the experts for advice and reassurance that the jab offered by their local GP is safe.
But the conflicting opinions put forward by the medical profession are leaving parents confused and scared. Some experts are adamant that the MMR
vaccine triggers autism and bowel disease in some children while others insist there is no evidence of a link.
This month three new studies are fuelling the debate. One to be published in the Journal of Adverse Drug Reactions next week says that MMR should never have been licensed in the UK because insufficient tests were carried out. Another, published in the December edition of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, but brought to the public's attention last week, says that a survey of 1.8 million Finnish children showed no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism or bowel disease. And to make the
confusion complete, the same day as the Finnish study was brought to light another study, published in the British Medical Journal, showed that one in eight GPs and a quarter of practice nurses believe that there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Government scientists immediately quoted the findings of the Finnish study in a desperate bid to reassure parents of its safety amid fears of a
measles epidemic because parents have been rejecting the jab in droves.
Professor Brent Taylor is head of the department of paediatrics and child health at the Royal Free and University College Medical School. He said the Finnish study should reassure parents that the link suggested by his colleague Dr Andrew Wakefield in a study in the Lancet journal in 1998 does not exist.
He said: "This is a 17-year study with a 14-year follow-up and I hope it does reassure parents. It overcomes all the criticism that this vaccine
was not tested for long enough. This was a very detailed study on a very large number of children and supports the other work that has shown that there are no serious side effects and that MMR does not cause autism and inflammatory bowel disease. No one anywhere else in the world has been able to reproduce any of Dr Wakefield's studies.
"Separate vaccines do not provide good protection for children. Immunisation rates are picking up again and we do not want a new programme
that could result in serious diseases which kill and maim people. There is no evidence that giving three vaccines separately is any safer than the combination vaccine. Some families will not complete the course and children will be left vulnerable to disease. If this is about choice what about the children's choice? They will be subjected to six vaccines instead of two."
But Wakefield would argue that his findings have been reproduced in further studies since the theory was put forward in the Lancet. One such study was published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
And those who believe the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella triggers autism in some children argue that the latest paper does not address this link. They say it is looking at acute adverse reactions and not the more long-term development of complex conditions such as autism.
Dr Ken Aitken, a Scottish-based clinical neuropsychologist, said:
"This study is only looking at serious adverse reactions over a brief period of time and not the period over which children regress to get autism."
He points out that doctors were asked to look out for specific adverse events such as death, allergic reactions, neurologic disorders and
miscellaneous syndromes such as diabetes or pneumonia but were not specifically asked to look out for autism. He also points out that doctors were told that the events were likely to be linked to the MMR if they
occurred within the first two to three weeks of inoculation. He says they were not asked to look out for longer term conditions.
Dr Aitken added that, as other studies have shown that the levels of autism are increasing in Finland, it is suspicious that not one case was
attributed to the MMR vaccine.
The summary of the conclusions of the Finnish paper did not actually mention autism. It states: "Comprehensive analysis of the reported adverse
reactions established that serious events causally related to the MMR vaccine are rare and greatly outweighed by the risks of natural MMR diseases."
The results of the study are split into various types of adverse reactions resulting from MMR. These are death, allergic events, neurologic disorders and miscellaneous complaints such as pneumonia, flu and diabetes. Comment about autism is however made in a discussion in the paper about the results.
It states: "No case of inflammatory bowel disease or autism was detected during this long follow-up study comprising three million vaccine doses. This finding is important because were there an association with MMR vaccination after such a short interval as suggested, this prospective study design would undoubtedly have disclosed at least some cases."
Richard Miles from London is the father of an autistic boy and is convinced his son's condition was triggered by the MMR vaccine. He is not reassured by the latest study. He said: "It is extraordinary that in the first four pages of the paper it doesn't even mention autism or Crohn's disease."
Experts in the Wakefield camp argue that the study was not looking at whether the MMR vaccine causes autism or not. They also point out that it
was dependent on doctors referring events to the authorities and not looking to see what had happened to the children who had been inoculated. They argue
that this type of research - referred to as passive surveillance - is only likely to pick up between 1% and 10% of cases.
David Thrower believes his son's autism is a result of receiving the triple vaccine. He is not reassured by the study. He said: "The Finnish study wasn't designed to study autism or bowel disease as an outcome. By quoting this study the Department of Health is once again failing to recognise that what we are looking at is a gradual degenerative syndrome,
not an acute adverse event. A study such as this will have completely missed gradual degeneration.
"The publicity surrounding this paper was orchestrated to deflect attention from the impending paper in the Journal of Adverse Drug Reactions
on how the long-term follow-up tests were never done."
Bill Welsh, from Glasgow, who believes his grandson's autism was triggered by the MMR vaccine, added: "Confidence in MMR, and in the veracity of officialdom's utterances, is sinking to an all time low. Parents are not being fooled. It appears no proper long-term safety studies were carried out
on MMR vaccines. Such studies, if they had been included, would have identified the insidious nature and symptoms of late-onset autism.
The autism epidemic sweeping the UK and USA correlates to the introduction of this combined vaccine containing three live viruses. Those who seek to defend MMR, regardless of the growing body of evidence pointing to its serious side effects, have only themselves to blame for the loss of faith in immunisation. The choice of single vaccines should be available to parents as a right."
Last week a parliamentary debate on autism had to be extended for 19 MSPs to tell of how autism had affected constituents in their area. Many raised the controversy of the MMR vaccine and called for the reintroduction of single vaccines in order to combat the worrying decline in the number of parents immunising their children.
Conservative education spokesman Brian Montieth called for the reintroduction of the MMR vaccine and his views were echoed by Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan and many of the SNP members.
This week Conservative health spokesman Dr Liam Fox said the Conservatives would reintroduce single-dose vaccines if they were re-elected if the vaccination levels were still low.
"It must be better for children to have a single vaccine than to have nothing at all," he said. "This is not an ideal situation but must be infinitely preferable to the prospect of dead or damaged children."
