If they are going for you, it proves you are doing your job, which is to expose their failures and coverups. Any publication is a public whipping post, and if wrong is being done, it needs to be exposed.

I can’t imagine many people in Britain believing any government assurances. We are all too long in the tooth. BSE [‘mad-cow’ disease] won’t be forgotten in a long time, and just look at the fuss Ken Livingstone caused over MMR.

Even their dietitians can’t be trusted, so ignore them and have faith in your readers. – Tony Crossley, via e-mail

The domestically produced MMR shot was initially mandatory but, within a year, had been reclassified as being on request once reports of adverse reactions started coming in (The Lancet, 8 January, 1994).

Rubella or german measles remains a childhood disease among the self contained Amish communities of the US. It has increasingly become a disease of adolescence and young adulthood in the rest of the States because of the vaccination programme.

Cases among the Amish community which makes up less than 0.05 per cent of the US population have been almost always mild, and pregnant women appeared to be naturally protected. Despite this, the Department of Preventative Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville says the Amish should be encouraged to be vaccinated (JAMA, 5 January 1994).

For the first time since records began in 1912, no measles cases were reported in the US for three consecutive weeks during November 1992 (JAMA, 5 January, 1994).

Another case which links Guillain-Barre syndrome to the MMR vaccine has just been published in the UK. Two earlier UK cases have been reported, while a further 20 have been reported worldwide to the vaccine’s manufacturer. The syndrome had previously been linked to influenza immunization following a high number of cases reported in the 1970s (The Lancet, 1 January 1994).

There was a mumps outbreak in Maury County, Tennessee shortly after children there had received the vaccine. Apparently, say authorities, the vaccine had failed. It is, in any event, only 95 per cent effective (Journal of Infectious Diseases, January 1994; 169: 77-82).

Cases of whooping cough are on the increase in America, even with high vaccine coverage. In 1993, the highest number of cases were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 1976 and double the number of cases reported since 1992. This isn’t due to a drop in vaccine coverage, said the CDC, but possibly the cyclical nature of the disease and waning immunity.

!AJAMA, 5 January 1994.

A two year old Japanese girl developed mumps shortly after being given the MMR vaccine. Nineteen days later, her nine year old sister developed mumps; the strain of the virus isolated in her was found to be identical to that contained in the vaccine. Japanese researchers reporting in The Lancet (7 August 1993) point to numerous other studies showing that the vaccine can bring on mumps.

This evidence was one reason for the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare’s decision last April to discontinue the use of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

British families whose children were allegedly damaged by the whooping cough vaccine are seeking compensation in a new court case.

Jack Rabinowicz, chairman of the legal aid steering committee on whooping cough vaccine, characterized the cases, brought by 15 children, as “strong”.

The new court case follows in the successful wake of the Irish case of Kenneth Best who was awarded £2.75 million in damages this year when judges ruled that he had been damaged by the combined diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus vaccine and that manufacturer Wellcome had not performed all necessary safety tests.

Intradermal or intramuscular hepatitis B vaccine may cause eosinophilia (increase in while blood cells, or leukocytes, which left untreated could result in inflammation of the sac around the heart or the brain, pooling of fluid, enlarged liver or breathing failure).

Japanese researchers from Kyushu University report on two cases of patients developing the disease after HB vaccination.

The IOM report, produced by a group of leading pediatric figures in America, who scoured hundreds of scientific papers, found evidence of a causal relationship between damage and the diphtheria, tetanus, measles, measles-mumps-rubella, oral polio vaccine, hepatitis B and Hib vaccines.

This latest report follows one in 1991 which found evidence of adverse effects from the whooping cough and rubella vaccines. Both studies were requested by the American Congress in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, passed in 1985. In its latest report, the committee concluded that there is a causal relation between:

* Diphtheria and tetanus shots and anaphylactic shock

* Measles vaccine and death from measle-vaccine-strain infection

* Measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and thrombocytopenia (a blood condition characterized by a decrease in blood platelets) and anaphylactic shock

* Oral poliovaccine and poliomyelitis and death from poliovaccine-strain infection

* Hepatitis B vaccine and anaphylactic shock.

The committee also said that the evidence ‘favours acceptance’ of a causal relation between:

* Diphtheria and tetanus vaccines and Guillain-Barre paralysis and brachial neuritis (inflammation and breakdown of nerves of the upper spine)

* Measles vaccine and anaphylactic shock

* Oral poliovaccine and Guillain-Barre syndrome

* Unconjugated Hib vaccine and early-onset Hib disease in children 18 months or older whose first Hib immunization is this variety.

The committee could not rule out a causal relationship between measles vaccines and cases of subacute sclerosing panencephatitis, a fatal wasting disease very rarely caused by measles itself. In the earlier report, the IOM concluded that evidence shows a causal relationship between administration of the whooping cough vaccine and anaphylactic shock, extended periods of inconsolate crying or screaming, acute inflammation of the brain and shock. The committee also found evidence that the rubella vaccine could cause short- and long-term arthritis.

After many months of attempting to discredit the work of Andrew Wakefield and co of the Royal Free Hospital in London, the people who have steadfastly maintained that there may be a link between the triple measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) jab and autism, the government has suffered a defector among its ranks.

Dr Ken Aitkin, an authority on autism, commissioned by the government to allay fears about the link between the condition and the vaccine, has blown the whistle on the government’s damage limitation exercise.

Dr Aitkin formed part of a 37 person strong Medical Research Council panel to study evidence between the triple jab and autism. Last spring, the findings of the panel were cited by then chief medical officer Kenneth Calman as a reason to definitively rule out any link.

Recently, however, Dr Aitkin admitted that the Department of Health did not accurately put forward the conclusion reached by the MRC. “We did not conclude that autism was not linked to MMR,” he said recently. “The view was that there was a problem which needed to be looked at very carefully and there was not enough evidence to rule out a link.”

Even worse, as far as government is concerned, Dr Aitkin is now sleeping with the enemy. He agreed to act as an expert witness on behalf of the 100 parents of autistic children seeking compensation from three manufacturers of the MMR vaccine for allegedly damaging their children. The case came to trial a month ago.

Dr Aitkin’s apparent defection is all the more interesting considering that he was part of a panel that was handpicked by the government. General members of the public concerned about vaccine safety were not allowed to nominate their own members.

Despite assembling a large panel of independent experts, the government and the Public Health Laboratory put their own spin on the results of an independent committee to back up their desired conclusion.

And now the government’s latest move is to ban single vaccines, with the spurious argument that the vaccines on their own are dangerous.

One has to compare this finger in the dyke approach with America, which is also in the midst of national debate about the safety of the MMR vaccine. When alarm bells have been sounded by the public, at least those in charge are willing to listen. No less than Walter Orenstein, director of national immunisation programme of the Centres of Disease Control and Prevention in the US, has indicated that although he is cannot uncategorically accept the autism link, yet he is not outright dismissive. Marie Bristol-Power, coordinator of The Network on Neurobiology and Genetics of Autism, of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development within the National Institutes of Health, again supports further research. Congressional hearings have recently been held.

There is much we don’t know about the MMR vaccine. We don’t, for instance, know, whether the single jabs are any safer than the triple one. That is only a theory which needs to be tested further, as does the supposed autism link, by being subjected to further scientific trials. But you’d never know we don’t know. Every day I read more information about this vaccine which is blatantly untrue but written with absolutely certainty.

And we’re not ever going to know if the people responsible for vaccination refuse to find out.

!ALynne McTaggart

The first evidence of this link came from the UK’s Andrew Wakefield who, in two small studies of children with PDD and gastrointestinal symptoms, found them to be many times more likely (93 per cent vs 11 per cent of controls) to have ileal lymphoid hyperplasia, a new form of inflammatory bowel disease (Lancet, 1998; 351: 637-41; Am J Gastroenterol, 2000; 95: 2285-95).

Wakefield’s most recent study used histological data from tissue microscopy to confirm the presence of persistent measles virus in children with ileal lymphoid hyperplasia (Mol Pathol, 2002; 55: 84-90). It was found that 75 of 91 patients with ileal lymphoid hyperplasia and enterocolitis were had measles virus in their intestinal tissue compared with five of the 70 control patients.

The authors concluded that the virus may act as an immunological trigger.

A recent commentary on all the evidence so far by Barbara Hendrickson and Jerrold Turner, from the Section of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Department of Pathology, University of Chicago, shows that even conventional medics now believe the evidence for a link is becoming compelling (Lancet, 2002; 359: 2051-2).

Now, in what it hopes is a definitive move, the DoH is funding a £300,000 study to be carried out by the National Institute for Biological Standards and Controls. Its task is to endeavour to replicate the findings of Dr Andrew Wakefield and his team at the Royal Free Hospital that first found a link between the vaccine and autism.

The Institute may not be throwing itself into the work in quite the open-minded way that concerned parents might have hoped. Two researchers at the institute are advising the manufacturer of MMR in cases being mounted by parents whose children have been harmed by the vaccine. The same two are outspoken critics of the autism theory, and have pooh-poohed new findings from Utah University that found traces of the MMR vaccine in the vast majority of 125 autistic children they examined.

While the nation waits for the unbiased soundings from the institute, the DoH has been spreading rumours that the UK is on the brink of a massive measles epidemic. There is absolutely no evidence for this, just as there was none the last time it raised the spectre of an epidemic.

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A recent issue of the British Medical Journal predicted that in the next few years, a booster dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine will be given in the second decade of life. This would follow on the heels of the Americans, who recently introduced a booster shot at age 11 in an attempt to counter the epidemics of measles it has been suffering lately.

Also expected is the introduction of the Haemophilus influenzae (Hib) vaccine, probably at the same time and in combination with the diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus shots.

I was at it again in mid-October, when the British government announced that all children approaching school age are to be given a booster jab against whooping cough.

The plan is that children will be offered this jab at the age of five, at the same time they are given their measles-mumps-rubella and polio boosters.

With the announcement came the claim that this new preschool whooping cough injection is the new improved version – an ‘acellular’ vaccine which magically avoids the feverish reaction in children over six months old, which was largely the problem, the government says, with the old one.

In other words, while you might have had to reach for the Calpol with the old jab, this one has been formulated to save you that little annoyance and your child that minor discomfort.

Just to set the record straight, the problem with the old jab wasn’t simply a bit of fever. This was the jab with the worst track record of side-effects of all. According to the American Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, set up in the US to identify the side-effects of vaccines, the overwhelming majority were due to the DPT vaccine.

According to a study of 100,000 children conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, children receiving the old jab trebled their chances of suffering a convulsion. After carefully sifting through the medical evidence on all vaccines, the US Institute of Medicine concluded that the DPT vaccine causes 17 health problems, including anaphylactic shock, inconsolable crying or screaming, encephalopathy (inflammation of the brain), acute neurological illness, lasting brain damage and even death. Certain evidence has linked this jab to sudden infant death syndrome, and other studies show that a child getting the DPT jab is six times more likely to develop asthma.

But why are they offering a booster jab if the first one, which has been around since 1912 (in the same crude formula as then), works so well?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t. A study of an outbreak of whooping cough in Cincinnati showed that the vaccine failed to protect children of all ages (N Engl J Med, 1994; 331: 16-21). Indeed, research from Sweden and Italy showed that the old vaccine was effective in less than a third to less than a half of the time (J Am Med Assoc, 1995; 274: 446-7).

As for the acellular vaccine, it is no safer and no more effective than the old one. Research demonstrates that one dose of it works less than three-quarters of the time (N Engl J Med, 1995; 333: 1045-50), and two doses, a little more than half the time.

At least one major study found that the rate of serious adverse reactions – seizures, developmental delay, life-threatening reactions and even death – hardly differed between old and new vaccines (Lancet, 1996; 347: 209-10).

On an anecdotal level, we are hearing of many more cases of ‘atypical asthma’ – the new appelation given to whooping cough by doctors who have been brainwashed into thinking that whooping cough has been more or less eradicated through vaccination.

So what we’re being asked to do is to bring forward our five year olds to receive a new vaccine, even though the old vaccine was perfectly safe, to combat a disease that no longer exists.

My guess is, like the measles booster of 1994, the ‘new, improved’ vaccine has been introduced in booster form because the old one isn’t very protective and the Public Health Laboratory Service is being inundated with loads of cases that look, to anyone other than a doctor, like good old common or garden whooping cough. The new vaccine is here to distract us from the fact that your child risked all those side-effects for a vaccine that couldn’t, in the end, protect him.

If I’m right, once again, the PHLS is throwing worse vaccines after bad.

Lynne McTaggart

A father is now accused of murdering his two babies. Do you know anything about this case? There has got to be a public acknowledgement of this cause of so much grief and injustice! Are you the person to expose it? – Stella Masters, London