http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=119359
MMR chief blames the media for jab 'errors'
By Steve Connor Science Editor
11 February 2002
The doctor behind the nation's childhood
immunisation campaign launched a scathing attack yesterday on those who
continue to question the safety of the triple MMR vaccine.
His intervention came as the Government was forced
to admit it was losing the public relations battle to shore up public support
for the measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine.
David Salisbury, a paediatrician for more than 30
years, said any change in the present policy to one in which parents were
offered the choice between a single or triple vaccine – as suggested by Liam
Fox, the Tory health spokesman – would be highly damaging for children.
"The health service has never given parents the choice to do harm
before," Dr Salisbury, head of the immunisation group in the Department of
Health, told The Independent. "Why should we actually contrive to
cause harm?"
He poured scorn on sections of the media for
undermining the MMR vaccine, and questioned if he could serve a government that
reverted to single injections for measles, mumps and rubella. "I would
find it extremely difficult to be promoting a policy I thought was
dangerous," Dr Salisbury said. "I never went into medicine to do
things that are dangerous and I would find it enormously difficult to implement
a policy I sincerely felt would put children's lives at risk."
He said Whitehall was working on ways to swing
public opinion behind the triple vaccine. "We'll be taking a very much
more active approach in communicating to parents and providing them with the
best information and the best opportunities possible to have their children
immunised," he said. "If they [parents] are getting all their
information from the newspapers then quite a bit of what they are getting is
misinformation. Every day I read articles in our newspapers that contain
factual errors. I don't know if that is deliberate misinformation, or poor
journalism, but every day I see factual errors given credibility.
"One of the first patients I saw [as a young
doctor] was a 12-year-old boy who had come into hospital to die because his
brain had been so devastated by the long-term effects of measles," he
said. "And one of the first babies I had seen in the neonatal unit was one
who had been damaged by congenital rubella. I don't need to see any of those
again, but that will be the consequence of this drive for single
vaccines."
Dr Salisbury said the MMR vaccine had never been
linked with autism or bowel disease despite repeated assertions to the contrary
by some media commentators. "I wonder if at some point all those
journalists who have done a great deal to destroy an immunisation programme
question what they've done," he said. "You only have to look at the
hysteria in our papers and then ask yourself why do the other 90 countries that
use this vaccine think we've gone completely mad?"
Dr Salisbury also criticised Andrew Wakefield, the
doctor whose research led to the current scare over MMR, for failing to include
"very elementary details" about the autistic children he cited in his
study.
"How many people picked up the fact that in
his paper that went on the internet last week, some of his cases had had
measles vaccine not MMR?"
Also from the Health
section.
Nurseries to warn parents of MMR rate
Troubleshooters to be sent into ailing
hospitals
Cost of pills to conquer depression hits
£310m
Troubleshooters to take over 'worst'
hospitals
Vitamins may hold key to birth disorder
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