10 years on, MMR debate continues.

[Guest guest]

Published today in the Sunday Herald, Scotland. Not yet online.

10 years on, MMR debate continues.

GUEST VOCALS.

BILL WELSH ON AUTISM.

On Tuesday it will be exactly ten years to the day when I went to York

University and first met Dr Wakefield. He was giving a lecture

on ‘the role of bowel disease in autism’. Dr Wakefield’s integrity and

compassion were in stark contrast to my later experiences with other

members of his profession.

He was, at that time, an honorary consultant gastro-enterologist at

the Royal Free Hospital London, and unknown to me had published a

paper in the Lancet which concluded that a sub-set of autistic

children had a “novel form of bowel diseaseâ€. Potentially this disease

was leading to the children’s neurological problems and the behaviours

commonly seen in autism. He also proposed a link with the

controversial MMR vaccine.

The die was cast.

The very suggestion that the vaccination programme was implicated in

autism provoked outrage. So much so that those charged with government

immunisation policy closed ranks. Public health supremos, government

departments, big pharmaceutical firms and the medical hierarchy went

into denial mode at warp speed. Knights of the realm, academics and

epidemiologists were corralled, given their media scripts and deployed

against Wakefield and his heretical theory.

The Department of Health began a regular parade of flawed

epidemiological studies in defence of MMR; studies from Finland,

Denmark, Japan etc, usually described as the “largest ever†or

“definitiveâ€. Each received massive media coverage but none of them,

on close examination, amounted to a hill of beans. The controversy

raged on.

New and independent clinical studies emerged identifying a link

between bowel disease and autism, but were buried in an avalanche of

UK government propaganda.

In parallel, a growing number of parents reported their child’s

withdrawal following the MMR. Inexplicably, this compelling parental

evidence continued to be ignored.

The bulldozer of denial had become unstoppable, reaching a new level

of state sponsored hysteria when, in 2006, Wakefield was

reported to the General Medical Council------- by a tabloid journalist!

Dr Wakefield’s GMC witch-hunt trial resumes in London this month. I

will proudly join many parents of autistic children to demonstrate

support for this fine, outstanding physician.

Bill Welsh is President of Autism Treatment Trust, Edinburgh.

www.autismtrust.org.uk