MMR and Freedom of Information

Anyone slightly interested in the ongoing MMR debate will find the revelations in these following links fron the ‘Freedom of Information Act Centre News’ extremely interesting:

Whitehall was warned on MMR risk to child brains

http://www.foiacentre.com/news-MMR-070305_1.html

Revealed: how Whitehall dismissed MMR alarms

http://www.foiacentre.com/news-MMR-070305_2.html

Parliament was given false MMR assurance

http://www.foiacentre.com/news-MMR-070523.html

MMR judge’s family link to triple-vaccine company

http://www.foiacentre.com/news-MMR-judge-070509.html

Comments on MMR vaccine (13)

http://www.foiacentre.com/news-MMR-comment.html

Jack Tennant
Homepage: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/379666.html

Comments

Hide the following 17 comments

FYI

01.09.2007 14:10

Please be sure to read these articles in full before taking any dismissive comments that may follow as fact.

cipect - I don’t believe people who are proven liars

01.09.2007 15:22

Swallowing a spider to catch a fly can be a profitable enterprise.

Early Polio vaccines were contaminated with Simian Virus 40 (closely related to HHV6), so the manufacturers changed the type of monkey kidneys to culture their vaccines in. Now of course we have a pandemic of AIDS instead of Polio.

Mike O’Plasma (fermentans)

The road to hell...

01.09.2007 15:45

..is paved with good intentions.

Maurice Hillerman’s ghost
Homepage: http://www.whale.to/vaccines/snead2.html

Correction:

01.09.2007 16:35

HHV6 is closely related to human cytomegalovirus and Simian Virus 40 is closely related to HIV.

Mike

Polite Questions Are Not Dismissive Comments

01.09.2007 19:44

Just like emotive stories from the Daily Mail aren't scientific evidence.

Those are interesting documents to be turned up but like the guy above says, what's it got to do with the current MMR vaccine?

Is there a better argument going than the "this is relevant because a polio vaccine caused AIDS (o rly?) and this is a vacccine too"(*) one? Because I'm quite comfortable with that getting dismissed out of hand.

(*) - I _think_ that's what is being suggested by one of the commenters, but I hope I misread it.

tom baker

Measles deaths

01.09.2007 21:30

If the cult writers at the Times are too much for you, you could try the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1994033,00.html

or the BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4871728.stm

or the Scotsman

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=97402007

Alternatively, you could ask anyone over 50 what it was like being at school then, with measles , whooping cough and mumps commonplace. You could try asking them what it was like having friends who were in legbraces or wheelchairs as a result of polio.

sinister cult

if you believe it can happen, it will happen

01.09.2007 22:02

or simply put, all illness and our physicalmentalemotionalspiritual etc responses to them
are psychosomatic
and the reasons for allowing vaccines into our systems are as manufactured as the vaccines themselves

see for example www.vaclib.org

wholistic system

Steady accumulation of evidence too much to ignore

02.09.2007 01:36

Dr Peter Fletcher was Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Health and Medical Assessor to the Committee on Safety of Medicines in the late Seventies where he was responsible for deciding if new vaccines were safe.

In 2006 Dr Fletcher said; "Clinical and scientific data is steadily accumulating that the live measles virus in MMR can cause brain, gut and immune system damage in a subset of vulnerable children…There's no one conclusive piece of scientific evidence, no 'smoking gun', because there very rarely is when adverse drug reactions are first suspected. When vaccine damage in very young children is involved, it is harder to prove the links…But it is the steady accumulation of evidence, from a number of respected universities, teaching hospitals and laboratories around the world, that matters here. There's far too much to ignore. Yet government health authorities are, it seems, more than happy to do so."

Dr Fletcher said he found "this official complacency utterly inexplicable" and added “there has been a tenfold increase in autism and related forms of brain damage over the past 15 years, roughly coinciding with MMR's introduction, and an extremely worrying increase in childhood inflammatory bowel diseases and immune disorders such as diabetes, and no one in authority will even admit it's happening, let alone try to investigate the causes."

"That is a very strong clinical signal that some children are immunologically at risk from MMR," he said. "Why is the Government not investigating it further - diverting some of the millions of pounds spent on advertising and PR campaigns to promote MMR uptake into detailed clinical research instead?"

Dr Fletcher also said "It is entirely possible that the immune systems of a small minority simply cannot cope with the challenge of the three live viruses in the MMR jab, and the ever-increasing vaccine load in general."

Dr Doomuch

For fuck's sake

02.09.2007 01:57

Why is Indymedia full of shite like this? It makes those of us interested in libertarian socialism look like dicks, guilt by association.

All this crap about MMR has led to kids getting a real, genuine, serious illness - measles. Still, what's a little collateral damage when the truth is out there eh?

tigersiskillers

Wild strain of measles verses the vaccine strain of measles

02.09.2007 17:38

This link (provided in an above comment) says one child has died from measles in the last 15 years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4871728.stm

Presumably though the BBC actually mean the wild strain of measles has caused a death, because the authorities have already paid compensation to at least one family whose child who died from the vaccine strain of measles. And, of couse, there is much speculation that the MMR may even be responsible for many cases of so-called cot-death or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Not forgetting of course that many other families were fighting to prove the MMR killed or harmed their children. That was, of course, until a Judge whose brother sits on the board of directors of the vaccine company denied them legal aid to have their case heard in court.

Surely, with that type on controversy hanging over the vaccine it’s simply unrealistic to expect parents to allow their children to be vaccinated with the two does of MMR if they genuinely believe the first one caused an adverse reaction in one or more of their children.

Think objectively. Would you really expect parents to allow their autistic child to be vaccinated with a second does of MMR if those same parents genuinely believe the first dose of vaccine cause their child’s autism? Would you honestly even expect them to allow their autistic child’s siblings to vaccinate? Of course not! So why seriously expect a 95% uptake when 1 in 58 – 1 in 100 children are thought to have ASD? Realistically therefore the 95% uptake it is not going to happen.

However, logically, if the MMR is completely safe, as the authorities claim it is, and these concerned parents had be given the opportunity to have their case heard in court, other parents would now be reassured by the courts finding and would be far more likely to have their children vaccinated. Unless of course, with the evidence presented to the court, the presiding Judge had no option but to rule in favor of the claimants.

Our authorities are patently going from one hyperbolic position to another in what appears to be a futile attempt to exonerate themselves from any form of culpability for their mistakes.

Go figure!

deaths from measles in the uk

02.09.2007 21:55

http://www.hpa.org.uk/infections/topics_az/measles/data_death_age.htm

and not vaccinating your child increases the chaznces of others getting the disease.

hard data

“hard data”, what is your point exactly?

02.09.2007 23:36

Your link says “In 2006 there was one measles death in a 13 years old male who had an underlying lung condition and was taking immunosuppressive drugs.”

Someone with an underlying lung condition taking immunosuppressive drugs is hardly a typical example to compare risks against, is it?

It also says “Prior to 2006, the last death from acute measles was in 1992.”

However:

"Information just obtained under FOIA shows in 1990 in the UK there were at least 7,480 adverse vaccine reactions and 1,990 serious ones with approximately 70 deaths associated with triple vaccines (DTP and MMR)."

"Currently the chance of anyone dying of natural measles in England and Wales if there were no vaccinations is less than 1 in 55 million."

"The chance of being struck by a bolt of lightning is over 30-60 times higher."

http://www.whale.to/vaccine/miller333.html

“MMR vaccine deaths”:
Homepage: http://www.whale.to/vaccine/mmr2.html

Sledgehammer to crack a nut philosophy rides again

03.09.2007 00:03

The rational for mass vaccination with the MMR seems to be entirely similar to the one used to invade Iraq.

I don’t know why the authorities just don’t go the whole hog and rename the measles virus the “Saddam virus” or perhaps even the “WMD virus”. After all, Saddam (or rather his supposed WMD) was regarded to be a very serious threat, just like measles, and to eradicate that threat the authorities injure and kill far more than the original threat would have.

Measles scare = 45 minutes scare (i.e. act now, think later)

The point of data

03.09.2007 07:28

I would have thought the point was obvious: apart from the one case, which you mention, and one other in 1992, there have been no deaths in children from measles. In 1980, there were 23 deaths of children.

The data which you keep on providing seems to be at least 15 years out of date. Can you provide some more modern data, prefreably from a peer reviewed journal such as the Lancet, for deaths from the MMR vaccine?

hard data

The "ongoing MMR debate"

03.09.2007 18:15

How it looks to me from the comments above:

anti-MMR:
* Here are some government papers about a previous version of the vaccine.
* Polio vaccine caused AIDS
* All illnesses are in your head, they are not caused by germs
* I'm speculating but, MMR "may even cause cot death"
* some parents believe their child's autism is caused by the MMR jab
* people are scared of vaccination (not that it's our fault) so the government should stop encouraging them to vaccinate their kids
* Measles is as non-existent as Saddam's WMD
* Vaccines kill and injure far more people than measles

I make that: 1 fact, 1 batch of evidence with tangential links, 1 arguable statement, 1 meaningless assertion and 4 outrageous falsehoods.

Not anti-MMR:
* don't those documents relate to a different vaccine?
* vaccination stops people catching diseases that were / are fatal within living memory
* as MMR uptake falls, measles increases and so does autism.

This debate seems as live and as real as the "global warming debate": a group of highly vocal activists with few facts attempting to create doubt over the settled scientific facts and in the process endangering lives.

William Hartnell

Alive and Well: The MMR-Autism Connection

03.09.2007 23:50

“The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate.”

http://www.jabs.org.uk/pages/Alive_And_Well.doc

Read it and weep
Homepage: http://www.jabs.org.uk/pages/information.htm

Read it and Yawned

04.09.2007 12:18

That's another long piece that skirts around the periphery. So this Dr thinks the Cockburn review was flawed. Why should I believe the word of this one doctor against the doctors on the Cockburn committee, all the paediatricians in the UK, the scientists who reviewed the work published in the Lancet?

Let me guess, you're going to tell me: they are ALL in on it!!!!!!111!!

I am running out of regenerations.

Patrick Troughton