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children since 1982.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42102-2002Feb7.html
New Measles Cases in Britain Add to Concern Over Vaccine
Inoculation Rate Declines as Study Stirs Parents’ Fears
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 8, 2002; Page A22
LONDON, Feb. 7 -- Public health officials reported a dozen
new cases of measles this week as Britain’s latest health scare—this time
focusing on a vaccine used in 90 countries around the world—prompted thousands
of parents to refuse to allow their children to receive the recommended shot of
measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
Britain’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson,
warned today that the country faced a resurgence of the three childhood
diseases, and Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the media of “totally
irresponsible scaremongering” about the vaccine.
But parents continued to express doubt, and the
vaccination rate in some cities was falling sharply, the National Health
Service said. Some Britons are having their children vaccinated separately for
each of the diseases, a method they believe is safer but that the government
calls less effective.
“I know what the government says,” said Nuala Garvey, 32,
who paid for the separate shots for her toddler at London’s Portland Clinic. “And
I know the science is unsettled. But I have my own feelings, and that should be
respected.”
The Health Ministry reported 268 cases of measles in the
first five weeks of the year, compared to 259 in the same period last year,
before the scare. The 12 new cases this
week were in addition to the 268.
The public fears stem from research published in 1998 by
Andrew Wakefield, a physician at London’s Royal Free Hospital, who purported to
find a connection between autism, inflammatory bowel disease and inoculation
with MMR vaccine in 12 children.
Autism often manifests itself in the second year of life,
which is when the first MMR shot is given. Epidemiological studies of British
and Scandinavian children have found no causal relationship between MMR
immunization and autism, however, and most experts believe the apparent one is
a coincidence.
Public health officials here warn that the risk of
skipping the vaccination is far higher than any complications the shot might
cause.
But Britons tend to distrust their government on public
health questions— an attitude that traces back to the “mad cow” disease scare
of the 1980s and ‘90s. As a result, the country is regularly swept by waves of
fear about various forms of modern technology, including genetically modified
corn, hormone-fed pork and cellular phones that are alleged to cause brain disease.
Blair has warned that this national habit can be
dangerous, because it suggests “a loss of faith in science” among the British
public.
In recent weeks, newspapers have turned the MMR “Jab Scare”
into a major news story. The story has a strong political edge, with
conservative newspapers targeting Blair and his wife, Cherie, because they
refuse to disclose whether their 20-month-old son Leo has had the shot. The
Blairs say their child’s health care is a private matter.
“Do Cherie and Tony Blair know something that the rest of
us have not been told?” wrote Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts. “Every day
the Blairs stay quiet, our suspicion increases.”
With the controversy ballooning and more parents rejecting
the shots, Blair has hinted strongly in recent days that Leo was inoculated. It
is “deeply offensive,” he has said, to suggest he would recommend one course
for other parents and follow a different one with his own child.
The vaccine has been used for two decades in the United
States and is required before starting school in many states. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention’s National Immunization Survey for 2000 reported
that 91 percent of U.S. children had the shot. The World Health Organization
says 500 million shots are given each year, in 90 countries.
Britain, too, has offered the shot for years, usually
between 12 and 15 months of age, followed by a booster shot. Both are provided
free by the government-funded National Health Service.
Through most of the 1990s, vaccination rates for the
target age group exceeded 90 percent. But this year, large numbers of parents,
particularly in London’s wealthier neighborhoods, have refused the shot. In
some London districts, the vaccination rate is below 50 percent, prompting
official warnings of a large-scale measles outbreak or epidemic.
Some countries have banned the separate vaccines that are
growing in popularity in Britain, and other countries recommend against them,
on grounds that parents might skip one or more shots and leave children exposed
to disease. But thousands of parents are lining up at private clinics for the
separate shots, which cost about $240 for the full course.
“New Alert on MMR Jab,” read the banner front-page
headline in Wednesday’s Daily Mail, over a story about a new study by Irish
scientist John O’Leary that found fragments of measles virus in the intestines
of children with autism and bowel disease.
But the same paper reported that O’Leary’s study did not
consider whether the children studied had been given the MMR vaccine, and that
O’Leary had warned that “no conclusions should be drawn” from his report about
the effects of MMR.
Staff writer David Brown in Washington contributed to this
report.
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