We couldn't trust the MMR

Jul 8 2002 By The Journal

What, every parent asks, if my healthy baby is the one in a million to react severely to a vaccine?

Thousands of parents lie awake the night before their baby's first combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab, worrying about the safety of vaccines.

Most of them accept that safety cannot be guaranteed and they appreciate the crucial concept of "herd immunity". Unless the number vaccinated remains well above 95pc, their child and others will become vulnerable to the return of childhood infections that once wiped out thousands. In some areas, immunity has now dropped to below 80pc.

But neither scientific evaluation nor relentlessly repeated assurances of safety from public health advisers and senior doctors are necessarily enough where your own child is concerned.

And so it is with me. My son turned three-years-old in January. He should have had his MMR jab two years ago. But aware that some parents - I have in my career interviewed two sets who claim their child's autism was caused by MMR - and medical experts were questioning the safety of the triple injection I decided, with the full backing of my partner, that we should investigate further.

Only then would we make up our mind whether our cherished only child should be allowed to have the jab.

We both read as much information for and against as was available to us. We surfed the world wide web seeking clues as to what may be happening in other countries. We spoke to other parents and our health visitor. The latter urged us time and again not to be selfish.

This boiled down to two arguments. The first was that by not allowing John David to be vaccinated we were putting other children at risk of catching measles, mumps or rubella. And secondly, we were being cruel in demanding our child have three single jabs when one would be quicker and less traumatic.

Neither argument answered our questions as to whether MMR was safe, however.

Being informed curtly by your health visitor `of course it is, the Government says so,' isn't guaranteed to fill one with hope.

Parents have never been more sceptical. Wasn't it former Conservative Agriculture Minister John Gummer who presided over his daughter munching her way through a hamburger on camera to reassure the nation humans need not fear BSE?

Gummer's confidence seemed plausible - until a link between CJD and mad cow disease was discovered.

There is of course another major problem - the chronically-shaky relationship between health ministers and the public.

The Department of Health attitude seems to be that the public can simply be told what is considered best for them.

That dogmatic, hectoring approach might have worked decades ago or in wartime, but today's public is more informed and less likely to accept that health ministers, or doctors, are infallible.

And why should we? Every week there seems to be a story of yet another surgeon managing to cover up their own incompetence for years with arrogance. And then there are the hospitals who have kept collections of dead children's organs in storerooms for years without telling anyone, least of all the parents whose feelings seem to have been given scant regard.

But I'm a fair person. And as a journalist, I don't dismiss anything without giving it due thought and consideration. Myself and my partner deliberated for hours over whether we should cave in to the pressure and allow John David to have his MMR.

The answer was no. We felt the risk, however small, of our son suffering an adverse reaction, was too great to take. In this we have the full support of both sets of grandparents.

The Government can rant and rave until it is blue in the face that MMR is not linked to autism and bowel disease, but I believe they will fail to convince parents - not least those of children who have developed the condition shortly after having the jab.

Rather than spending millions on an advertising campaign to encourage parents to take up the MMR wouldn't the money be better spent in proper research into the vaccine's effects on children's bodies? In finding out if some children are susceptible to the three-in-one vaccine and what could be done in the future to weed out those who may have an adverse reaction?

Like a growing number of parents we also feel we should be given the choice of whether to opt for the MMR or single jabs. The Government claims the single jabs aren't as effective and parents may well not have all three. I have heard no argument which convinces me the single shots don't work as well as the MMR.

And why wouldn't parents have all three done? Children seem to spend much of their early life to-ing and fro-ing between home and the surgery for inoculations. Parents obviously remember to take them for those.

Now GlaxoSmithKline, which also makes MMR, is to stop making Ervevax, the single rubella vaccine. It denies it has been influenced by the Government, which backs the MMR vaccine.

The company claims that there is no demand - despite rising numbers of parents wanting an alternative. This is witnessed by the hundreds of parents and children who have been regularly attending the single jabs clinics being held in Darlington by the Direct Health 2000 group.

Why reduce single rubella protection in the face of increasing demand? What are they going to do after the limited NHS stock has been used up?

The news has come as a new poll, published yesterday showed that more than three-quarters of the population now believes that there should be a public inquiry into the MMR jab.

There seems to be a cynical attempt to put barriers in the way of parents who want to immunise their children with the individual jabs.

I believe this is an attempt to coerce parents into going down one route or leaving their children unvaccinated.

I am as convinced now as I was two years ago that parents should be given the choice. Ours has been to steer John David down the single vaccines route.

With the end of vaccine production, this choice will be denied other parents. But that will not mean every child will therefore be given the single jab.

If anything, it will make the likelihood of an epidemic more of a reality.