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