Andrew Wakefield speaks out

[babanouche]

Sorry if this has been done to death. I've never been to this part of MN before. This is a really interesting clip, worth watching to the very end. My LO is due MMR soon and I have my doubts now.

Previous to watching this I was sure he was a bad scientist. He says the measles outbreak in wales may be due to the vaccine not working. He also throws doubt on the people who approved the triple vaccine & challenges certain professionals to a televised public debate. Very thought provoking stuff.

YoniRanger, I'm not sure that the argument is so much about how dangerous or not measles is. I don't think there are many parents who don't take the disease seriously, none of us know beforehand how our children would cope with it (or any other infectious disease such as chicken pox which has the potential to be very serious too).

As I have said on another thread, measles having the potential to be dangerous does not make the MMR vaccine safe. Or indeed even necessary as it is a triple vaccine.

I really think if the government takes the risk of measles as seriously as they claim, they should offer the single vaccine. If the objective is to protect children from measles there is no logical reason for not making the single vaccine available. The government is being pigheaded about this. And that is utterly ridiculous - it is extraordinary that they say they are very worried about this measles outbreak and yet they withhold the vaccine most relevant to dealing with the problem.

I hope you and your family are OK.

I love Wakefield's voice - shame he lies so much - I watched him recently and got to the first lie within the first couple of minutes (it was the "single mumps vaccine never caused complications/meningitis" claim that we discussed and debunked in the other thread). I agree with the "sad, sad man" comment further up the thread.

There is not much wrong with singles per se, as long as you can get them all, they come from a reputable source and are kept cold and appropriately stored on transit. Then what remains is that you need 6 GP/health provider contacts. It would take a very organised/dedicated parent to work these all in, so children will stay unprotected. Apart from that - how do you space the shots? Biomedical evidence says live viral vaccines need to be spaced 4 weeks. People with vested financial interest pull all sorts of schedules out of their arses thin air, I have seen 3, 6 and 12 months, all with the same vague notion of "viral interactions", not supported by any biomedical literature.

You cannot get all singles, single mumps is not being made. Some clinics are very vague where their single measles vaccine will come from. I think Wakefield and the media-manufactuversy actually contributed to Merck dropping the singles, the decision was in part political. But of course, this decision could only be made because there is a reasonable and safe alternative: the MMR. Just go get it.

but AW performed one small group study. no good science, or good scientist, basis any significant theory on one small study.

it is bad science.

Faster, it was a case series - small samples are fine.

Catherina, yes you mentioned the singles being 'dodgy' on another thread and then disappeared iirc. :)

I'm not sure which clinics you've found that don't disclose which measles vaccine they use. Usually they are rouvax (sanofi pasteur) and m-vax (Egg free vaccine from SII). I'm not sure why the argument about mumps and rubella seems to feature so much when discussing protection against measles. They weren't diseases that were ever lumped together until the MMR became available. The singles vaccine can be used as an alternative to the MMR against measles - that's pretty much all that is relevant.

I think it's a bit patronising to suggest that a parent won't be able to add another 4 appts to their schedule (or 2 seeing as mumps isn't currently available) They cope quite well with all the others that have been added over the years! Some people actually prefer to delay those until closer to puberty anyway.

this is the first page I looked at:

www.childrensimmunisation.com/single-mmr/

We remain committed to sourcing all our Single MMR jab vaccines from internationally recognised manufacturers.The vaccines may not be licensed in the UK but all this means is that they do not have a Marketing License in the UK and must therefore only be prescribed and can not be freely promoted or bought over the counter.

Dodgy. They follow it up with the Walker conference presentation which has never seen the light as a peer reviewed publication. Überdodgy. Loads of folk lacing their pockets abusing (and fuelling with dodgy arguments) the fear of parents.

the "later" vaccines are usually given in schools btw, so no "scheduling" on the parents' side needed.

What's dodgy about that? In fact, many of the vaccines that we use on the NHS schedule come from 'internationally recognised manufacturers'. We don't only use vaccines produced in the UK you know.

Do you really think parents who decide to opt for singles are incredibly incompetent and unable to factor in a few extra appts? Really? Have you seem the UK childhood vaccine schedule?

I too am at a loss as to why it is so important for children to have rubella and mumps vaccines in order for them to be protected against measles.

CatherianJTV Sanofi Pasteur is the biggest vaccine dedicated company in the world. They supply the French equivalent of the NHS and globally supply more vaccines than Merck does. Hardly dodgy!

I don't agree with your speculation that there are issues with single vaccines being given in private clinics. But even if I did, I see that as yet another argument for the government to stop withholding single measles vaccine. Vaccine uptake will improve, no private clinics will be able to cash in and we will have government assurances on how vaccines are transported, stocked and administered. Win win all round.

Thank you everyone for responding, especially those of you who responded with links to other sources.

Let me be clear - my eldest has had the MMR. I was very much in the camp that this man was an idiot. My point was that watching the video surprised me and has made me think there might be more to this than has been reported.. So I will be doing some more research and looking into single vac, despite someone here telling me not to. (WTAF?)

IMO it's good to keep an open mind. A government that can lie about WMD and take us into an illegal war can lie about other things too. However I also take coorong's point that wakefield has enough supporters to mount a legal defence and he hasn't so...

I'm by no means decided on this though I still lean towards MMR. I would never not vaccinate my kids so please stop telling me to vaccinate.

ps also agree there's nothing dodgy about the wording of the single vac site up above this post ;)

CatherinaJTV I'm not sure that it is a good idea for you to slag off specific private clinics and call them dodgy like this - not sure if it the sort of thing that could potentially get MN into trouble. Perhaps it would be better if you stuck to doing it on your vaccination blog?

If you look a little further on the website you link to, you will find;

www.childrensimmunisation.com/measles/

MMR single vaccinations are manufactured in France, India the EU, China and Russia. Single vaccinations we use for Measles and Rubella are approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and mmr single vaccinations have a specific import licence granted by the Medicines Health Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the body that maintains strict control on the use of medicines and vaccines in the UK.

MMR single jabs are specially imported and stored at temperatures between 2-8 C., to ensure that their effectiveness is maintained.

All our doctors are either trained GP?s, Registrar or UK Specialist Registered Paediatric and Neonatology Consultants. All our doctors are registered with the GMC (General Medical Council) and have professional indemnity insurance. We maintain a strict code of conduct to ensure the highest standards of patient care.

See, I would totally buy the "clinic doing their best to help parents to find singles, because it is the parents' wish" - I have used a private clinic to be able to get my kids the TdaP/IPV when their school only offered the Td/IPV. However, if they actively contribute to parental fear, thereby increasing the market for their services, I will call that loads of things, dodgy probably being the most flattering.

How are they contributing to parental fear?

bumbley, its still one study not something to turn current thinking on its head.

Faster, it's a case series - no one should look at it as proof of anything.

Right.

So your reasons for using private clinics are valid. But others' reasons are not.

I really think you should stop calling specific clinics dodgy on MN.

Bumbley How are they contributing to parental fear?

by posting this:

In 2009 (1) a Dr Walker in the USA has studied 275 autistic children (2) and found in a large percentage of the cases that these children had the live Measles virus living in their gut after vaccination with the triple MMR . You can see more about this on the Daily Mail online. (3) We do not use the same MMR or Measles virus vaccine in the vaccine we have chosen to use. (4) (my numbers)

(1) nope, actually, the work was presented as a poster at the IMFAR conference in 2006.

(2) actually, the abstract reports on results of 82 kids, 70 of them supposedly had measles virus in the gut. They tell us they have samples of >275, but have not analysed them all.*

(3) www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-388051/Scientists-fear-MMR-link-autism.html it says 2006 now, but for the longest time, the Daily Mail had not date stamp on this article and therefore every few months, this Mail blurb would be flaunted as new evidence supporting Wakefield.

(4) I think that is a lie, since there is no way the people at the clinic can know what vaccines the kids Walker looked at had had, because it is not reported in the abstract (* below) and a full paper has not been published since 2006.

Now, tell me how you can interpret the above facts and let the clinic appear in a good light. At best, their research was irresponsibly shoddy and they believed the Daily Mail. At worst, they are intentionally fuelling parental fears to see their singles with false claims.

• full text of the abstract:

  Persistent Ileal Measles Virus In A Large Cohort Of Regressive Autistic Children With Ileocolitis And Lymphonodular Hyperplasia: Revisitation Of An Earlier Study

  Steve Walker, Karin Hepner, Jeffrey Segal, Arthur Krigsman, Wake Forest University School of Medicine

  Background: Autistic enterocolitis, consisting of a nonspecific ileocolitis coupled with ileocolonic lymphonodular hyperplasia (LNH), was first introduced as a new, potentially virus-induced disease entity eight years ago in a group of ASD children with developmental regression.

  Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to examine ileal biopsy tissue in a large cohort of pediatric patients who carry a diagnosis of regressive autism and whose chronic gastrointestinal symptoms warranted diagnostic endoscopic evaluation, for evidence of measles virus RNA.

  Methods: Patients who had been diagnosed with autism and who were referred to a pediatric gastroenterologist for evaluation of chronic GI symptoms were eligible to participate in this IRB approved study. For each patient, medical histories, vaccination records, histopathology reports, and ileocolonoscopic biopsy tissue were available for evaluation. Terminal ileum (TI) biopsy tissue was assayed by RT-PCR for the presence of measles virus RNA and PCR-positive samples were sequenced.

  Results: Medical and clinical data have been collected for >275 patients who fit the study inclusion criteria. PCR analysis on TI biopsy tissue from an initial 82 patients showed that 70 (85%) were positive for the F gene amplicon. Fourteen have been verified by DNA sequence and an additional 56 amplicons are being sequenced now. Work is ongoing to assay the remaining specimens (~200) and to identify and assay relevant control tissue samples. Conclusions: Preliminary results from this large cohort of pediatric autistic patients with chronic GI symptoms confirm earlier findings of measles virus RNA in the terminal ileum and support an association between measles virus and ileocolitis /LNH. Sponsors: ARI; NAA; individual donations

That one clinic was just the first I came across, but now that I have looked at their pages a bit more in depth, my opinion has gone downhill from "dodgy" (see my longer post above).

The only 'false claims about singles' that you seem to be accusing them of is that it's not the same strain as in the MMR. If you've only read the abstract then it is possible that they have said which MMR vaccine was used. Do you know which strains are in the US MMR vaccine/s?

There are lots of other clinics that you'll need to look at Catherina before you start labelling them all as 'dodgy'. Although you seemed happy enough to label the singles as 'dodgy' on the other thread when you didn't even know who the manufacturers were.

Bumbley,

the information is not in the abstract, which is the only openly accessible information. Again: there is no publication, this was only ever presented in poster form at one autism meeting in the US in 2006, which I doubt the kind GPs attended. Had they attended the IMFAR meeting or gotten information from elsewhere, the rest of the info in their blurb should have been more accurate, wouldn't you think?

Bumbley, you get awfully hung up on one word. Do you think it is neutral and evidence-based how this particular clinic advertises the singles?

Do you know which strains are in the US vaccines? That might be worth knowing before you accuse them of making false claims.

I don't see it as being 'hung up' on a particular word. I'm more hung up on you goving people the idea that anyone considering single vaccines is somehow putting their child at risk because the private clinic or the vaccine itself is somehow not up to the standards of the NHS or the MMR.

Do you know that Walker only looked at kids vaccinated in the US? Since Arthur Krigsman is the senior author, who offered his gut biopsy services world wide (i.e. parents flew their autistic children in from the UK, for example), you cannot know that. Neither can the GPs who make those claims.

The MMR2, which is most widely used in the US contains the Jeryl Lynn mumps strain and the Edmonston measles strain.

I'm more hung up on you goving people the idea that anyone considering single vaccines is somehow putting their child at risk because the private clinic or the vaccine itself is somehow not up to the standards of the NHS or the MMR.

That idea sort of grew in your own head though.... although I do admit that I think that a single clinic importing a vaccine from Russia or China will have a much harder time upholding the cold chain and controlling the background of their vaccines.