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'Triple jag autism could be next BSE'
http://www.sundayherald.com/11838
The consultant who first suggested that the MMR
vaccine causes autism has warned MSPs that government failure to face up to
the danger will lead to a catastrophe on the scale of the BSE crisis.
Dr Andrew Wakefield told a Scottish parliament cross-party group on autism,
launched in Edinburgh last week, that the UK faces an epidemic of the
lifelong disorder. He renewed his call for single vaccines to be used to
immunise against measles, mumps and rubella.
On a two-day visit to Scotland, Wakefield - a consultant gastroenterologist
at the Royal Free Hospital in London - hit out at Sir Kenneth Calman, the
chief medical officer in 1998.
In the official report into the BSE crisis, Calman was blamed for saying
that beef was safe. Wakefield said Calman had taken the same approach to
the MMR scare.
Calman had warned that a wave of lethal epidemics could sweep Britain if
parents went on refusing combined vaccines. The former chief medical
officer had said there was no need, on the basis of evidence presented by
Wakefield, to change vaccination policy.
Wakefield said: "These same people have been seen as victims of their
own handling of BSE, and that is where we are heading with the MMR.
"It is going to take a strong body of people that are not prepared to
be pushed around to prevent a similar situation.
"I feel strongly that, if this is something we have contributed to by
our own failure to act, then we have a moral obligation to look after these
children for all time."
He dismissed claims that the rising incidence of autism is a result of a
change in diagnostic criteria and insisted we are now seeing an epidemic .
At a Glasgow conference on the causes of autism, the consultant explained
how numerous families approached him, all with the same story to tell.
Their children all had autism and bowel problems and they believed that the
two were linked and that they had started as a direct consequence of the
MMR vaccine. They said that, until vaccination, their children had been
developing normally.
Wakefield said: "At first we were sceptical but the story was so
consistent that we felt we had to investigate.
"Of the 160 autistic children we looked at, only five did not have
bowel disease. The parents were right. The medical profession was
wrong."
The expert attacked others for ignoring claims of a link. He said:
"When the parent tells you they believe the problems started after
exposure to the MMR vaccine, do you say, 'That is very interesting but
politically it makes me very uncomfortable'? No, you bring together experts
from around the world and you accept the over-riding need to establish
whether there is a link."
Wakefield said research carried out by his team and Professor John O'Leary
of Coombe Women's Hospital in Dublin - and presented to a US Congressional
hearing earlier this year - was clear evidence of a link. He said further
research papers, to be published shortly, would confirm these findings.
He emphasised: "I am not anti-vaccine. It is a recognition that one
plus one plus one is not equal to three. It is about the way the live viruses
behave.
"We have data suggesting there is interaction between the compounds
that may pose a risk."
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