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MMR remains under scrutiny
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...069872,00.html
April 11, 2004 MMR remains under scrutiny LAST weekâ?Ts front page story about Matthew Costen and Joe Quick made devastating reading and my sympathies go to them, their families and friends. I feel I must respond to the statement that my â?odiscredited research started the scareâ??. In the mid-1990s, my colleagues and I at the Royal Free were contacted by parents from all over the UK, with remarkably consistent stories. They told of normally developing children who subsequent to their MMR vaccination had lost their communication skills and developed chronic intestinal symptoms. These children were subsequently diagnosed as autistic but their intestinal symptoms had been largely ignored. When their bowels were examined we saw, and described in the Lancet, a new form of bowel inflammation (autistic enterocolitis). After their referral to the Royal Free, a number of the parents of these children decided to seek compensation from the manufacturers of the MMR vaccine. Your investigation suggested that I had a conflict of interest due to the fact that a separate study, involving some of the same children from the first case report, was part-funded by the Legal Aid Board â?" funding that went into the research, not to me. Subsequently, the Lancet editor and 10 of my former colleagues, who had collaborated on the original research, wrote in the Lancet that the reference to the timing of the MMR vaccination and the onset of the childrenâ?Ts symptoms should not have been included in the case report. These are matters of opinion. They do not dispute that these children have a form of inflammatory bowel disease. It is therefore simply not the case that the original Lancet report has been discredited or is â?ofatally flawed.â?? This report has been supported by subsequent clinical and laboratory studies. In the six years since that Lancet report, I and colleagues worldwide have looked at hundreds of similarly affected children and have published many papers that explore the possible link between MMR, autism and this bowel disease. A charity, Visceral, was formed in July 2000 to investigate autistic enterocolitis, Crohnâ?Ts disease and ulcerative colitis. I work for this charity and spend my life administering our limited funds to co-ordinate research worldwide. My first duty is to my patients and I have urged and will continue to urge parents to immunise their children against the respective diseases. If, as appears to be the case, the public simply do not trust the safety of MMR then the time has come for the authorities to reinstate parentsâ?T rights to choose the single vaccines which have been used for many years. Dr Andrew Wakefield Twickenham, Middlesex |
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