Comments on: Andrew Wakefield, MMR and….The Observer??

By: Ms. Clark

Ms. Clark — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 19:58:57 +0000

The situation with Dr. Amy Holmes also knocks a big hole in all the stories told by the parents where the child miraculously comes out of their autism following some treatment or other. The woman was hallucinating that her child was speaking following some biomedical thing or she was in deep denial or the kid just “regressed” again following the biomedical miracle and she forgot to report that part. 6 years after all his miraculous gains, her son is still autistic and can’t speak at all apparently. She also claimed he was making friends in school, well, that must have disappeared, too, because apparently, apart from other kids using letter boards in Texas, he has no friends his age.
http://autismdiva.blogspot.com.....story.html

Of all her claims, the hardest one for me to buy is that Mike’s strabismus (an eye that turns in) disappeared with chelation. It would be interesting to see if he still has it, or if he had a surgery to correct it at some point. My kid had strabismus, lots of autistic kids have it. My kid had surgery to correct it at age 4. It’s not the kind of thing that self-corrects.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:54:47 +0000

thousands of other children in this country can have the same symptoms immediately after mmr

That is not credible. Even if you count all existing anecdotes of such, we’re probably talking about a handful of occurrences. In most cases, the child is said to be diagnosed a few months after the MMR. In some cases, it has been shown that parents change the dates of the events to have it match. The Cedillo case is interesting, because that’s a “test case” (i.e. the best the petitioners could find) and it has been shown the child was autistic before the MMR. So excuse me if I’m a tad skeptical of your anecdotal account.

By: Kev

Kev — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:26:00 +0000

Thanks Sarah, for putting a name and a voice to bullshitters everywhere. Your opinions are clear. You refuse to listen to science, you listen to proven charlatans. You will do so in spite of the facts. Good for you.

Trouble is, you’re wrong. You’re demonstrably wrong. So at the moment you’re just another person with their fingers in their ears singing ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA-LA-LA’. You’re not doing anyone any good with this level of denial.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 12:27:52 +0000

seriously, i think the way some of the people saying these things about Andrew Wakefield are being very unprofessional themselves! To use terms such as “f**ked up” is one easy way to put people off believing the pile of crap about mmr being safe on your site.
i dont think its safe. and i dont care what you or the gmc or any investigation shows. i SAW my sister have that vaccine. the night before was the last time she spoke to me or made any sound or eye contact for five years, and there is no way in hell you are telling me that she and thousands of other children in this country can have the same symptoms immediately after mmr and the two are unrelated. i dont care about science. i am not in the medical profession nor do i wish to be. but i dont need any research or government filtered papers telling me that MMR is safe because i wouldnt believe that over my own dead body. so dont try and ram it down my throat because i just wont swallow that one for any of you biased people on here.
yeah sure mmr may be safe for about 90% of kids, but if the government is giving it to all at the cost of the normality and lives of the other 10% they can stick it in their own a**es because its wrong. i dont care which of you agree and which of you dont and post abusive replies.
i have my voice as according to my human rights to freedom of expression, opinion, belief and choice (which were still mine last time i looked) ; and so do all of you, so i will make up my own damn mind thank you, and my beliefs on mmr stood long before i even heard the name Andrew Wakefield.
But i’ll tell you this much. i hope that even if this hearing and all you slanderers smear his name, i hope to god he or someone of his stature proves this link and you eat your words – because this vaccine has to meet its end sooner or later, and since there was no clinical reason to get rid of the singles in the first place (which i will be PAYING for all of my children to have rather than be bullied by my health visitor) its a bit obvious why it was really done. do the words budget cuts, overspend and reducing costs ring any bells? Problem is, they havent messed up a few benefit claims or immigration cases this time, the government are, when it is inevitably proven, responsible for the deaths and occurence of disabilities in the very people they were meant to protect, our children.

By: The Observer eventually responds to my e-mail pointing out their basic factual errors on MMR. And tries to weasel their way out of an apology, again. « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:29:33 +0000

[...] · No Comments On July 5, the Observer published two terrible MMR stories that Kevin Leitch summarised nicely: The Observer “had decided to play the role of media dumbass. Obviously the mail and Private [...]

By: HN

HN — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 02:12:24 +0000

By the way, there is lots more information in this book (where I learned that the MMR approved for use in the UK in 1988, was the same that had been in use in the USA since 1971):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vaccin.....061227951/

It is a very good and readable book.

Another good online book on vaccines is this:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pu.....apters.htm

By: HN

HN — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:34:34 +0000

The information is freely available here:
http://www.mmrthefacts.nhs.uk/

And can also be found in papers indexed at http://www.pubmed.gov (you can get full papers from a library, either academic or municipal, that subscribes to certain journal services.

By: A. mulen

A. mulen — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:22:47 +0000

HN, thanks for your reply. Unfortunatel save for blogers etc information is not readily out there. I think there should be more effort to educate and reassure parents than what we see now. So part of the discussion should be how to reach out to the parents not only purely scientific discussions. I imagine this question should be answered by all researchers

By: HN

HN — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:18:40 +0000

Despite using only two links, my comment has gone into the spam bucket, or waiting to be moderated.

A. Mulen, if you read my question properly your question would have been answered.

So I’ll note that in this recent paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/si.....h=17626143

It says “In 1992, brands containing the Urabe strain of the mumps vaccine virus were withdrawn after it was noted to be associated with an increased risk of aseptic meningitis.[1] This did not appear to have a deleterious effect on uptake. ”

And it continues in the full paper: “While there are known adverse reactions following the vaccine, as with any live vaccine, these are predictable in that they are also complications of the diseases e.g. febrile convulsions and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. [6] On the other hand, features of autism do not follow postnatal measles, mumps or rubella, unless accompanied by a severe encephalitis. For this reason, prior to its release, no studies had been carried out specifically looking for autism after administration of the vaccine and no significant concerns had been raised in this respect after 16 years of use in the US.”

So here it is… the vaccine being used now replaced one where the Urabe mumps strain caused problems. But even when they were removed, the uptake was not effected. The one being used now is the one used in the USA for sixteen years before its introduction in the UK, and is the one with the safer Jeryl Lynn mumps strain (if you go into PubMed who will find several studies compaing those two strains, with other mumps strains… guess which one is considered the safer version?).

Now, why is it that when a dangerous mumps strain was replaced with a safer one that did not cause a problem? But after almost 20 years of use the safety of the SAFER vaccine gets called into question?

Where does it show that the USA had some massive increase of autism related to gut issues starting in the early 1970s? Why is it that Wakefield is the only one to make that connection? Why does he still make that connection when it was found that his samples were contanimated and did not actually contain measles virus?

By: HN

HN — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:27:59 +0000

The reason that the UK switched was because the mumps vaccine they were using was contained the Urabe strain. That strain caused meningitis. They switched to the Merck MMR because it had the much safer Jeryl Lynn mumps strain.

The Merck MMR used in the UK is the exact same one that has been used in the USA since 1971.

I’ve mentioned this… this is not a secret. The switch in 1988 was to a much safer vaccine. From here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/si.....h=17626143 … “The combined MMR vaccine was introduced to UK in 1988 and uptake of the vaccine rose rapidly to a high of 92%. In 1992, brands containing the Urabe strain of the mumps vaccine virus were withdrawn after it was noted to be associated with an increased risk of aseptic meningitis.[1]”

You can also read about it, including the development of the Jeryl Lynn strain of mumps vaccine in http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vaccin.....061227951/

Okay, I have answered your question. It should be noted that this is the same information I put forth when asking MY question. Knowing now that the MMR vaccine in question is the EXACT same one that was approved for use in the USA in 1971… answer my question (cut and pasted from above… so forgive the repetitiveness)
:

Okay, A. mulenâ€¦ maybe YOU can answer my question: The MMR in question was approved for use in the USA in 1971, and in 1988 in the UK (the UK switched to a vaccine with a safer mumps component). Why did the Merck MMR vaccine MMR vaccine only start being a problem after over 20 years of use, and in the UK?