'Unprecedented' rise in measles

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link

The BBC this morning have a story about an unprecedented rise in measles cases over the last year.
I'll C+P to save you clicking the link

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There is an "unprecedented increase" in measles cases in England and Wales, experts report.

Data from the Health Protection Agency showed there were 1,217 cases of measles from January to November 2008.

And 75% of the 115 cases diagnosed in November were outside the traditional hotspot of London - in the north west, west midlands and south east.

The HPA's Dr Mary Ramsay said the rise in cases was due to "relatively low" MMR uptake over the past decade.

indeed there is a my little Pony section....I think I even might have posted on one section...but it was answering a post on active threads...and I never take note in which section I am posting than, lol...but anyway, am pleased that at least the section is about real horses....lol...I got worried for a moment they might have gone nuts ...however, I think a vaccination section would probably be a good thing....it would keep it all together...

What exactly is the reason there are no long term studies running comparing rates of all sorts of things among vaccinated/unvaccinated children?

I'd volunteer my DD for one if it would get some answers for everyone.

Apparently it would be 'unethical'.

This argument is made by those who choose to interpret such a study as meaning withholding vaccinations from a section of the population in order to study them.

Of course this is utter tosh as there is an existing unvaccinated population who could be studied.

I would volunteer my children for such a study. One is vaccinated (and has gut/allergy problems) the other is unvaccinated (and in good health).

Oh, I like horses and non-vaccinators! MN is customising itself for moi.

Beachcomber - I find that v v odd. There is as you say an unvaccinated population to study and the results would clear up a lot of questions IMO.

Like a lot of things in this sorry tale it doesn't add up.

Whilst looking for something else, I came across this tonight. Looks like the US government at least has decided that such a study wouldn't be unethical after all. This makes the UK government's position look even more incomprehensible and dubious.

Still if they manage to ensure a media blackout on such a study just as they have on Hannah Poling's case then maybe they won't look too bad.

Also found this which I thought might be of interest to Daftpunk's GP. (joke)

It is a letter of complaint by Bill Welsh of the Autism Treatment Trust and makes for most interesting reading as it is a concise and easy to read summary of the MMR/autism story. (for some reason the title page doesn't come up on the pdf but it is from this page from the One Click website).

I agree with what he says about the unethical practice of vaccinating infants for mumps and rubella.

Also note what he says about the rubella virus being a major cause of autism.

Stuffitllama, sorry I didn't realise you'd already asked for a vaccination topic and been turned down. I don't see why we shouldn't have one, I firmly believe my own ds was vaccine-damaged and I've learnt a lot from the many vaccine threads we've had already.

However, I often find such threads upsetting and exhausting to follow, the horse topic is a bit of fun. Can't we have both?

'sok Pixel but sometimes I think there are dark forces at work

woooooo

Thanks for the links Beach ..would you email me at [email protected]? only if you want/have the time

Sure. Possibly not today though as am on my way out, got a tractor to decorate with paper flowers and a village fete to go to. I know it is traditional and all but why do they have to hold it in January? It is freezing and there is snow on the ground.

The excitement of French life in the middle of nowhere

I'm sure on a recent thread Justine said MNHQ would look into setting up something along the lines of 'private groups' which would be less public than most MN threads currently are. She said that they can't do it till they have the time to do the tech needed to set such groups up. I don't know if the threads inside the groups would be more private than the current SN threads, IYSWIM, but even if they were as private, there would be less flaming and trolling, one would hope. So if there were a non-vaccinators' group, hopefully pro-vaccinators (and health visitors) would stay away.

I'm on various Yahoo groups which discuss these matters, but would find an MN group more user-friendly.

(Whispers) I don't know if the long arm of the Dept of Health press office would reach into MN and blacklist us all, though. (Looks around extremely furtively)

Don't you think they should call the horsey topic 'All the Pretty Horses' after the novel by Cormac McCarthy? Surely every true horse-lover hates My Little Pony? Or is that just me? I like all the other topic name suggestions on the threads as well. 'The Pony Club' would keep out the riff-raff.

hi beachcomber

didn't realize the family GP was up there with the daily mail & fruitshoots.

Actually the Daily Mail runs quite a lot of articles questioning vaccination policy, not least because one of its columnists, Quentin Letts, has a son with autism.

Yes, aviatrix, I think she and I are talking about slightly different things. I don't mind what kind of thing is set up, but am pleased to see free discussion of the pros and cons of vaccination, and possible solutions to the dilemmas, eg single vaxes and how to get them, or how to proceed if you don't vax at all.

Anything would do really Temerity. There's such a lot of interest and when I first came here I looked for it as I thought there might be like-minded people. I was rather shocked there wasn't one! But tbh I wouldn't be that keen on a private one. There are plenty of questions that parents have which are neither pro-or anti- -- just looking for information.

But I did think your idea of having a place where non-vaccinators should share concerns would be v v helpful.

Actually Avi to answer your question from elsewhere, no, it hasn't, so I do slightly live on the edge here!

Nowt wrong with a good GP Daftpunk but they can't be experts in everything.

I like mine because he admits only too freely that he doesn't know much about vaccine damage and the gut/allergy problems my daughter suffers from as a consequence. He happily admits that I know more about many issues of vaccination than he does and that I most certainly know my daughter's problems better than he does. I sometimes pass documents onto him that relate to my daughter's condition and he lets me know what he thinks of them.

When I expressed concern at the MMR my GP said "I've got four children and they've all had the MMR. That's good enough for you."

That was the end of his discussion on the subject and left me . It didn't address my concern for a baby who had been born 10 weeks prem, was allergy-prone(eggs, cat hair, feathers)and suffered from asthma. I had been told that MMR is cultured on egg so ds should have the jab in hospital, but I'd seen what eating a cake made with egg could do (big lumps on his back) & couldn't imagine injecting him with the stuff.

So he's still not protected. But I want to protect him.

One other thing - DS is a scientist. He works for the Govt & is trained to think logically, but he believes you cannot discount the 'coincidences' stories & so won't let our dch have the jab. He has seen too many experiments where scientists have ignored 'inconvenient' data that doesn't fit the hypothesis they have set out to prove.

Goldacre is a serious misinformer. Have had personal experience of his tactics, and despite giving him everything he asked for in full detail, he chose to ignore it and later on to discredit our establishment by omission, lying and linking with other, less open establishments. He has his own agenda and god forbid anyone should challenge him on it - they are decried as gullible fools who are the victims of hippy propaganda and who shouldn't be let out unsupervised (ok, I'm paraphrasing a tad but really, he makes my blood boil!)

That's very interesting thumbwitch. Interesting, intriguing but not very surprising.

Interesting to hear a first hand account thumbwitch. I have read some pretty damning things about him but don't have any direct experience.

For anybody interested in looking up some of the people and organisations that he has links with, this site Lobbywatch is interesting. Goldacre himself is not mentioned on it but The Science Media Centre is. This pharma funded lobby has all sorts of unsavoury links and a clear agenda to control the comment on science issues that happens in the 'free' press.

Also from Martin Walker's ebook that I linked to earlier;

Quote;

"It appears, however, that he has always been a post-grad clinical research worker, now possibly studying for a Phd at King?s College, the home of the psychiatric school of ?all-in-the-mind aetiology?. In all probability Goldacre has been at this University Hospital since taking his MA, and was probably attached to it when he was taken on by the Guardian. If this is the case, most probably he doesn?t see patients, except when he passes them in the corridor at the Maudsley as he makes his way to the Liaison Psychiatry Unit within the Institute of Psychiatry,29
where he is studying under the Prince of Spin Professor Simon Wessely, the head of the Liaison Psychiatry Department.30,31Wessely is an advisor to the Science Media Centre and on the Advisory panel of the US American Council on Science and Health, one of the most
heavily funded pro industry lobby groups in the world.

In the early years of 2000, the IoPheld over 200 research grants with an annual value of around £14.5 million. Its second highest source of funding was the pharmaceutical industry. The IoP has received funding from, amongst other sources, Unilever, a massive chemical based company; SmithKline Beecham and Pfizer Limited, both producers of antidepressant drugs; Novartis Pharmaceuticals (previously Ceiba Geigy); Lilly Industries Ltd, the manufacturers of Prozac; Hoescht Marion Roussell; GlaxoSmithKline, vaccine manufacturers; Bristol Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals; Bayer; Zeneca Pharmaceuticals; and Wyeth Laboratories. It also receives funding from the British and US governments and the mobile phone industry."

From pages 40/41.

Goldacre also has links to Brain Deer who has his own links to pharma lobbies and who has played a major role in having Wakefield hauled up before the GMC.

I think it is concerning just what a following of the public Goldacre has aquired and how many people quote him as some sort of authority. He needs outed as much as possible IMO.

Have emailed you Stuffitllama.

beachcomber

time to shake hands on this i think, we're both doing what we feel is right.

i just wonder what the average parent in the street (as i was) is supposed to do with all this information? if my GP told me to go home and research it myself i'd be totally confused, because for every report that links MMR to autism there's one that discounts it, and unless you're a scientist you probably wouldn't understand half of it anyway?

and as for me having a "i'm alright jack" attitude...well quite frankly that's rubbish. i had my last child vaccinated at the hight of the scandle (for want of a better word) i still went with the MMR and by doing so protected not only my child, but the wider community.

Erm... Goldacre is forever bad-mouthing 'Big Pharma', as he calls it. He has called several times for an open register of all drug trials, to stop pharma companies from burying the results of trials that don't suit their purposes.

I'm in no way qualified to get into the MMR debate, but I can't reconcile the Goldacre columns I've read with the picture you're painting here. If he's a tool of the pharma industry they he's doing a rotten job.

have emailed you back Beach