Dr Andrew Wakefield On MMR Vaccine In Sunday Express
Sunday Express
12 October 2008
Hollywood takes on the MMR jab
By Lucy Johnston
As celebrities voice their concerns about the triple vaccine and measles
outbreaks continue to plague Britain, Health Editor, LUCY JOHNSTON speaks
exclusively to Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who started the debate
When Tour de France champion, Lance Armstrong, and actress Jenny McCarthy hosted
a fundraising gala in California recently for families convinced that MMR caused
autism in their children, a debate that has never really gone away was thrown to
the fore once more.
The star-studded event in aid of Ante Up For Autism, highlighted the fact that
the controversy surrounding the triple vaccine is now becoming a celebrity
issue.
Meanwhile, in Britain, last week saw the 20th anniversary of the controversial
triple jab.
High profile critics of MMR now include actor Jim Carrey, his girlfriend Jenny
McCarthy, and the all-girl rock group the Dixie Chicks.
McCarthy and Carrey were recently given an hour on the Oprah Winfrey Show to
promote her new best-selling book, Mother Warriors, which maintains that
vaccines can trigger autism in infants. She says her 6-year-old son Evan
developed the symptoms following his triple jab.
"After the MMR Evan started having seizures," she said. "After I treated his
medical issues, which the medical establishment continues to ignore, my son
recovered from autism and he is not the only one. I talked to 60,000 mothers and
kept hearing the same story.
"Vaccines are safe for some children and not for others. We want to reduce the
number of vaccines. We want the toxic ingredients removed and independent safety
studies carried out.
Few parents questioned the use of the combined vaccine when it was introduced
into the UK in October 1988. However things changed irrevocably in 1998 when Dr
Andrew Wakefield, then a gut specialist at London's Royal Free Hospital
published an explosive article in The Lancet linking autism with MMR.
The medical establishment and government turned on Dr Wakefield. He was forced
out of his job and has been blamed for the significant drop in uptake of MMR,
leading to fears over the widespread return of the diseases the jab is designed
to protect against.
Last week, a Health Protection Agency spokesman pleaded with parents to give
their children the MMR, pointing to new figures that revealed an increase of 231
cases of measles from 2006 -2007, bringing the total number to 971. Overall
vaccination rates are currently running at 85 per cent across the country but
some areas such as London have rates as low as 49 per cent.
Wakefield, a father of four, is now based in Texas, where he operates a
charity-run clinic called Thoughtful House for treatment of and research into
autism. About 2,000 autistic children are being treated. Dr Wakefield and two
other colleagues, Professor Simon Murch and Professor John Walker-Smith, are
currently awaiting a decision from the General Medical Council about whether the
research they conducted in the UK breached ethical codes.
In a rare and exclusive interview with the Sunday Express Dr Wakefield defended
himself against critics and denied he was "courting celebrities" to promote his
theory.
"I have only met Jenny McCarthy a couple of times. I have never tried to
influence her," he said. "She has her own story to tell about how she blames the
vaccine for her son's autism. Her story is so similar to that of many other
mothers who say their children were developing normally until they had the MMR
jab between 12- and 18-months, when they developed a form of regressive autism.
She is an important voice and I have tremendous respect for her courage in
speaking out."
Dr Wakefield and his team identified a bowel disorder that causes "leaky guts".
He theorised that the virus damages the gut, leading to inflammation and
secondary injury to the developing brain. He believes this syndrome, unique to
some autistic children, could be caused by the triple jab after studies found
the measles part of the vaccine virus present in the gut.
His critics pronounce him a maverick but his work has since been replicated by
other studies from Italy, South America and various centers in the US.
American researchers revealed in 2006 that 85 per cent of samples taken from 82
autistic children contained the vaccine strain of the measles virus.
Recently the former head of the National Institute of Health in the US and the
head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have
acknowledged that poor study design may have led to underestimation of the risk
of autism following vaccines.
Wakefield said no parent of the children treated at the Royal Free or at
Thoughtful House had ever complained about his work and that his aim was to make
sure the children's problems are recognised and treated appropriately.
"My sole purpose is to help these children and get to grips with the root of the
problem, which is what I am doing," he said. "Despite having discovered an
apparently new disease my colleagues and I are being vilified purely because of
the vaccine association. This link has threatened Government policy and
drug-company profit. What we're witnessing over the triple jab is a propaganda
campaign based on who has the biggest budget. I have none while the budget of
the UK Government and its allies is limitless."
Dr Wakefield, who is to publish a book, The Lesser Truth, on his experiences
over the controversy next year, added: "Unfortunately much of Britain's media
has bought into this propaganda lock, stock and barrel. Without the manpower or
financial back up, I have waited, watched and just got on with my work. Now the
time has come to tell the story."
He cites parallels between his story and that of Dr. William McBride, the
Australian gynaecologist who first alerted the world to the danger of
thalidomide, the morning sickness drug that caused widespread foetal
malformation, in 1961 in a letter to The Lancet. Drug manufacturers and European
governments resisted the withdrawal of thalidomide until the weight of evidence
and media pressure was overwhelming.
Do government's still conceal evidence and cover up?
The Sunday Express has discovered evidence that health officials failed to warn
of serious risks linked with the MMR jab before it was introduced.
According to a secret dossier, five cases were reported of potentially deadly
brain inflammation following the use of MMR in Canada before it became part of
standard childhood vaccinations in Britain.
The internal documents from the Government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and
Immunisation meeting also reveal reports that another brand of MMR had caused
"neurological complications" from the measles component of the vaccine in the
US. The minutes of the committee on vaccination meeting in 1988, released under
the Freedom of Information Act, blame the mumps component of the vaccine, called
Urabe, for five cases of brain inflammation.
Despite this, from 1988 these brands were administered routinely without any
warning of serious risk until the two brands that contained the Urabe mumps
strain were withdrawn four years later because of health fears.
Some children died or were seriously brain damaged by this vaccine. One of these
was Hannah Buxton, who was 18 months old when she reacted to her first MMR jab
given in the first week of the new campaign. She started having fits and died 18
months later in February 1992.
Parents Carol and Tony of Towcester, Northants, did not know Hannah had been
given the strain of vaccine later withdrawn after it was deemed unsafe. In March
1992 a Government tribunal blamed the vaccine for her death and the family was
awarded a vaccine damage payment.
Dr Peter Fletcher, former Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Health,
is also sceptical about the Government's position and the safety of the triple
jab.
In a previous interview he said: "The refusal by governments to evaluate the
risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history.
There are very powerful people in positions of great authority who have staked
their reputations on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost
anything to protect themselves."
Wakefield does not claim he is right about the link with autism but he believes
it needs investigating, not ridiculing. In the meantime he says the Government
should offer parents the choice of single vaccines. He has, he says, privately
asked vaccine policy makers why this is not happening and been told that
"offering single jabs would destroy the triple jab programme."
This, he feels is not good enough. "The first priority should be to protect
children from infection with safe vaccines. A cloud of doubt has been cast over
the safety of MMR and parents should have a choice."
However, parents looking for this choice are finding it increasingly difficult
to obtain single jabs with the handful of private clinics offering them often
running out of supplies.
The Department of Health insists the vaccine is safe. A spokesperson said: "We
believe that the vaccine has an excellent safety record and studies have
confirmed this. Neither population-based studies or studies in individual
children have confirmed a link between MMR vaccine and autism."
However, with Hollywood's renewed interest it seems this important debate has
moved ever further from a resolution.
**
The double feature in the Sunday Express included pictures of Dr Andrew
Wakefield and his wife Carmel in front of the GMC buildings with supporters.
A larger picture with the inscription ON THE ATTACK: actor Jim Carrey carries
his partner Jenny McCarthy's son Evan as the couple take part in a Washington
rally in June aiming to eliminate toxins from children's vaccines.
Below, cycle ace Lance Armstrong, pictured with son Luke, opposes the MMR
vaccine.