Article
Preventing killer diseases
The fall in MMR vaccinations is fatal
The national health service will be accused of bully-boy tactics. Ministers will be asked to intervene.
A former GP who has been offering parents separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines, rather than the single MMR jab, has been reported by the Worcester health authority to the general medical council. This will reignite the furious row over the safety of the MMR vaccine, but where better to settle it than in front of the medical profession's conduct committee?
Reason has flown out of the window. There have been two small studies - one in Dublin and one in London - suggesting a link between MMR and the development of bowel disease and autism.
A panel of top scientists was convened by the medical research council, at the request of the Department of Health, to review the London study - comprising just 12 cases - and could find no link. A succession of further UK studies comprising 498, 305 children and in Finland, some 3m, has found no links.
Yet MMR vaccinations have dropped dramatically. In some parts of London they are as low as 75% and only 85% across Britain. The World Health Organisation believes 95% is vital for full community immunity.
All three diseases are threatening to return with dire consequences. Low vaccination rates in Ireland and the Netherlands have already led to deaths from measles. Rubella, as a moving letter in the adjoining columns noted last week, causes pregnant women to produce deaf and blind children, who are frequently brain damaged too.
Single doses do not increase protection, which is why they were replaced by MMR. They require a delay between injections, increasing the vulnerability of children, and reducing the chance of the vaccination cycle being completed. Japan, which still uses them, has suffered 79 deaths from measles alone between 1992-97.
Doctors, above all, are supposed to believe in evidence-based medicine, not conjecture and guesswork.