10 Years On- The MMR Debate Rages On

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10 years on, MMR debate continues.

The url is:

http://www.sundayherald.com/search/display.var.2113944.0.uk_in_denial_over_mmr_autism_link.php

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.

http://www.autismtrust.org.uk/