MMR - LESSONS IN LINE DRAWING Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:48:30 +0100 From: Clifford G. Miller

MMR - LESSONS IN LINE DRAWING Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:48:30 +0100 From: Clifford G. Miller To: Ellimd@gosh.nhs.uk

Dear Dr Elliman,

I have seen your June 2006 letter calling for a line to be drawn under the association between MMR vaccine and autism. Regrettably letter is long on puff and short on fact. I attach a copy to ensure there is no confusion.

Those of us who are concerned about child health safety are concerned by the attitude of you and your colleagues on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, in the Health Protection Agency and in the Department of Health.

If you are all so concerned about children becoming injured or dying from measles, why insist on withholding single vaccines from children whose parents do not believe you when you claim the MMR is safe and who would vaccinate their children if given the choice?

Instead of taking action to save lives you people have intentionally adopted the policy of sitting around waiting for the body count - childrens' bodies. You then expect to tell the public "told you so".

It may not work quite the way you have it planned.

Your own letter condemns you when you say "It is not too late to avert this predictable tragedy." You admit it is predictable. You people chose to sit on your hands and let children die.

It is you people who have adopted that policy. It is you people who have been scaremongering and failing to deal with the issues. And it is you people who must take the responsiblity for any childrens' deaths. The public will be asking the questions and laying the blame squarely on the shoulders of New Labour. Dr Ladyman when a Health Minister claimed publicly he left the decisions to the experts, which is an abdication of ministerial responsibility but it puts you people in the firing line.

The public are not stupid about the MMR. It is not just the Wakefield hypothesis. They see children who become ill even now after getting the MMR. They have friends and neighbours with children and they have their own families and grandchildren. They talk about it. They see the increasing numbers of autistic children and ADHD kids and kids with behavioural problems in school when there were none years ago - people can and do remember - they really are not so stupid as to think the autistic kids have always been with us. You are the people who choose not to see it and are in denial and fail to record the adverse reactions when they happen or pretend they do not exist.

As for your letter claiming "A large body of scientific evidence shows no link between the vaccine and autism or bowel disease" where is it? There is not one study that demonstrates that.

You have also had eight years to produce an alternative explanation for the damage caused to the MMR vaccine damaged children. So where is it?

Apart from Wakefield's original study, where are all the clinical studies that support you? There are none of those either.

Where are the peer reviewed short and long term safety studies that show the MMR vaccine is safe. There are none.

You cannot produce accurate figures for the risk to children from measles. The DoH's references to the studies they rely on for the figures given to parents are out of date and inadequate. I know - I asked for them under the Freedom of Information Act.

So let me help you. I attach a graph of measles mortality from the Office for National Statistics 20th Century mortality statistics.

Prior to the introduction of measles vaccine nationwide in 1968, the ten year average national measles mortality was 80 and falling. The ten year average for the 1950s was 163. Interestingly, the attached graph clearly demonstrates several things:

measles vaccine was introduced when the disease was already beaten
something else dramatically and rapidly reduced deaths from measles year-on-year well before the measles vaccine was introduced
the effect of measles vaccine is insignificant in comparison
you people continue to damage your credibility claiming vaccines were responsible when it is clear they were not

But wait, let us see with just one example what you people have achieved with vaccines having no proper safety studies:-

asthma now kills 1500 pa (UK) - vastly more than measles before vaccination
it is well-known in vaccine manufacturing circles that vaccines cause asthma and allergies and there are peer reviewed papers on the issue
asthma also blights tens of thousands of lives in the UK annually
it's increasing at 1% per annum (unlike measles mortality which was falling)
children are the worst affected
- hardly surprising as they are the most vaccinated

Another very clear example for those of us truly concerned about child health protection is the explosion in life threatening food allergies which started in 1991-2. Children are the hardest hit. This coincides with the accelerated DTP schedule and the MMR catch-up campaigns and has been accelerating in our children ever since. 20 children a year are now dying and it was 7 only 5 years ago. That is many more than measles deaths when the single measles vaccine was in use up to 1987 and the annual mortality is now climbing rapidly. Hospital admissions for anaphylaxis have increased 700% in a ten year period.

Then there are all the other immune system related disorders that have been springing up over the past thirty years, not to mention the cancers, especially those in children.

Yet you still do not bother with long term safety studies for vaccines. Now why might that be?

So now please produce the detailed risk-benefit analyses for the MMR vaccine demonstrating the benefits of the MMR outweigh the risks and so that the public can study them carefully. Ah, but of course, there are none - which is what the JCVI minutes seem to indicate.

Now, please tell me how many third world children die because they cannot afford things like asthma medication or emergency adrenaline for anaphylaxis when they contract life threatening food allergies. And what about the ridiculous problems you have created for children in parts of the world like India who develop nut allergies when nuts are staple diet? What are they to eat - if they have not been killed first? And please do not tell me they always had nut allergies in those parts of the world - they did not.

I will not go further, the list is endless. It is a list you people are responsible for.

Sincerely,

Mr Miller