MMR doctor links 170 cases of autism to vaccine
By Lorraine Fraser, Medical Correspondent
(Filed: 21/01/2001)
 

THE consultant who first raised concerns about MMR vaccinations has disclosed to The Telegraph that he has identified nearly 170 cases of a new syndrome of autism and bowel disease in children who have had the triple-dose injection.

Andrew Wakefield, a consultant gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, said that in the "majority" of cases parents had documentary evidence that their child's physical and mental decline had followed the vaccination. Professor Wakefield said: "Last week in our clinic we saw nine or 10 new children with exactly the same story, referred by jobbing paediatricians from around the country who said, 'This child developed normally, had a reaction to MMR and is now autistic'".

In his first public comments since the row erupted in 1998, when he reported on 12 cases, Professor Wakefield said that he remained seriously concerned by the safety of the vaccine, despite reassurances from the Department of Health. He said: "The department says that the safety of MMR has been proven. The argument is untenable. It cannot be substantiated by the science. That is not only my opinion but increasingly the view of healthcare professionals and the public.

He said: "Tests have revealed time and time again that we are dealing with a new phenomenon. The Department of Health's contention that MMR has been proven to be safe by study after study after study just doesn't hold up. Frankly, it is not an honest appraisal of the science and it relegates the scientific issues to the bottom of the barrel in favour of winning a propaganda war."

The doctor, who was fiercely attacked by health officials for voicing his doubts three years ago, said in an exclusive interview that he felt driven to break his silence because of the accumulating evidence. His remarks will infuriate the Government and sharpen the dilemma of parents over whether to have children innoculated with MMR.

It emerged last month that a rising number of doctors and nurses were worried about giving second doses of the vaccine, and pressure is growing for its separation into its three component vaccinations, spread over three years. In his 1998 article in The Lancet, Professor Wakefield reported finding a devastating combination of bowel disease and autism in 12 children.

His revelation that that figure has reached almost 170 cases will shock parents and doctors and add pressure on the Government to justify its vaccination policy. This month Dr David Salisbury, the head of the Government's immunisation programme, insisted that MMR was safe.

The vaccine, which contains live measles, mumps and rubella virus, has been given to millions of children in the UK since its introduction in 1988 but the take-up rate has fallen sharply since Dr Wakefield made his original claims.

Ten days ago health chiefs warned parents that Britain could face a measles outbreak unless more had their children vaccinated with MMR. Professor Wakefield said, however, that if an outbreak were to erupt it would be the fault of the health department, which had "failed to address the safety issues".

The doctor and his colleagues are testing the hypothesis that the measles virus from the vaccine can lodge in the gut of susceptible children, damaging the bowel and causing autism, and that the addition of the mumps virus makes that more likely.

Were all of these children killed by the triple MMR jab?
13/1/02 Sunday Express

Focus By Lucy Johnston
Health Editor

AT LEAST 26 families claim their children died as a result of the controversial measles, mumps and rubella jab, the Sunday Express can reveal.

In some cases the Government has awarded parents up to £100,000 under its 1979 Vaccine Damage Payment Act. In others, post mortem reports concluded the jab was the most likely cause of death. Despite this, the Department of Health insists no child has ever died from MMR.

This assertion is a key aspect of its £3 million publicity drive to persuade parents the vaccine is entirely safe.

It contradicts the view of the US Government, which accepts children die from MMR and awards compensation as a result. Most children do not react to the jab, but medical literature supports the view that MMR can occasionally kill. The parents are now demanding an official inquiry into the deaths. Julie Roberts, 40, whose daughter Stacey died, said: "The Government should take responsibility. It has never given proper warnings of the risk and still doesn't despite the evidence. Tony Blair can see his children at home. I have to visit my daughter at her grave."

Experts writing in the Journal of Pediatrics concluded that of 48 children who reacted to the measles component of the jab, eight died and the rest had seizures or brain damage. And a recent study on 1.8 million children by the Finnish Health Board linked neurological reactions, allergic attacks, epilepsy and meningitis to the vaccine. Our research follows speculation over whether Tony Blair's 19-month-old son Leo has had the MMR jab. The Prime Minister has said he fully supports the vaccine but will not say if Leo has had it.

Many of the families of children who have died have taken legal action. Richard Barr, of solicitors Alexander Harris, has details of 24 cases. He said: "It is widely acknowledged in medical literature and by the American government that the triple vaccine can, on rare occasions, kill, yet this Government won't accept it."

Jackie Fletcher, of the pressure group Jabs, which is trying to highlight the potential dangers, said: "The Government should be giving people full and accurate information about health risks."

But a Department of Health spokesman insisted: "Parents who received payments after their children died following MMR would not get the money now as science has moved on. MMR protects against death and we stand by the fact that no child has died as a result of MMR."

Wendy Francis's son, Robert, began behaving abnormally two years after he had MMR in January 1990. He lost control of his movements and slept for 18 hours at a time. Within months he fell into a coma and died in December. Robert, then seven, had developed a degeneratative brain condition called SSPE (sub-acute sclerosis pan encephalitis), linked to the measles component.

The disease can have a long incubation period  and Mrs Francis, 40, an auxillary nurse and Robert's consultant think the vaccine was the only way Robert could have developed it. The family, from Easington, north Yorkshire, are taking legal action against the vaccine's manufacturer.

Ashley Shipman was born in 1985 and was a healthy three-year-old when he received the MMR vaccine. When he was nine his parents Elaine and Andrew of Eastwood, Nottingham, noticed he was having problems with his balance and co-ordination. He too was diagnosed with SSPE and died in June 1999, aged 14. They received £30,000 compensation.

His father, a lorry driver, said: "We took Ashley into hospital in October 1994 and by Christmas he was in a wheelchair. We were told by the consultant who treated him that his condition was caused by his vaccination."

In 1995 the Government's vaccine damage tribunal paid £30,000 compensation to James Smith, of Gateshead, for brain damage after he was given MMR at the age of four. James died nine years later aged 13. Biopsy material taken from his brain and intestines will form a central plank of the scientific evidence in support of a legal case due to be heard in October next year. Up to 300 cases relate to this brand of vaccine - Pluserix - which was banned by the Department of Health in 1992 after being linked with meningitis. This was two years after an identical vaccine was banned in Canada.

John and Faye Smith say the jab transformed their healthy, intelligent son into a child needing round-the-clock care. It took them six years and four hearings, however, to persuade the vaccine damage tribunal of this.

Faye, 59, said: "It's not about money, but truth. It's diabolical that the Government refuses to acknowlege the risks of MMR."

Judith Dwyer, 45, of Tongwynlaif, near Cardiff, received a payment after her four-year-old daughter Chloe died following a "booster" jab in 1989. She too was given a version later banned because of its dangerous side effects. Chloe developed pins and needles in her legs, then paralysis and problems breathing. She was rushed to hospital but it was too late.

After an eight-year fight Judith, an intensive care technician, persuaded a tribunal the jab was the likely cause of Chloe's death. In September 1996 it accepted this and paid out.

Mother of two Judith said: "Health visitors called me a scare mongerer and laughed. But we fought to  raise the profile of vaccine damage." Stacey Berry, of Atherton, Manchester was 13 when she had a booster jab in November 1994. Days later she started having fits, "stopped smiling, and stared into space." She was diagnosed with the brain disease SSPE and given two years to live. She died in November 2000, aged 19. A post mortem examination concluded the disease was a "rare complication" of the vaccine".

Christopher Coulter was 15 when he suffered a fit and died in his sleep 10 days after being vaccinated. He had an unblemished health record and no history of epilepsy but no explanation has been offered other than the statement on his death certificate - "asphyxiation due to severe epileptic seizure". His mother Anne of Hillsborough, northern Ireland said: "Nothing would replace Christopher, but I want answers. I want peace of mind for my daughters should they ever have children."

Hannah Buxton was 18 months old when she reacted to her first MMR jab. She started having fits and died 18 months later in February 1992. Parents Carol and Tony of Towcester, Northants, did not know Hannah had been given the strain of vaccine later withdrawn after it was deemed unsafe. In March that year a tribunal blamed the vaccine for her death. Nicola Gentle, 29, of Plymouth, Devon, is convinced her 15-month-old baby Emma Jane died because of the triple vaccine she was given in September 1998. Within six hours she was on a life-support machine. Three days later she was brain dead but a coroner said he could not say for certain whether or not MMR had killed her.

Shirley Fitzgerald's son Kieren was given the MMR jab in June 1991 when he was 14 months. He reacted within days. "He stopped smiling, laughing and crying and became frightened of his toys," said Shirley. Kieren also developed bowel problems - linked to MMR by some scientists. In July 1992, he died, aged two. Toddler Harriet Moore died following an MMR vaccination in 1998. Six weeks later she suffered fits and died in her parents arms. Sarah and Pat Moore, of Peasedown St John, near Bath, took the case to tribunal.

Jade Scrimger was vaccinated with MMR at 17 months and died from meningitis three days later in October 1998. Her mother Sheena has since discovered  the drug used on her daughter was later banned by the Department of Health because it caused meningitis. She has abandoned the idea of taking legal action against the vaccine manufacturers, however, because lawyers say it is not worth it. In Britain the maximum award for a child's death is £7,500. Five days after Elaine Adam's 16-month-old son Stevie was given the MMR vaccine 1991 he too developed meningitis and died. Elaine and her husband Robert, of East Kilbride, were convinced MMR was to blame but their fears were dismissed by doctors. Mrs Adam has refused to allow her second child, Terry, six, to have the jab.

13/1/02 Sunday Express
OPINION

Vaccination vacillation

WE REPORT today on the families who have lost babies, they believe, due to the MMR vaccination. Their claims add further confusion to the debate about this injection, yet Tony Blair has still not offered reassurance on the matter by telling us that his son Leo has had this vaccination. It means thousands of parents are paying doctors to give their child these three inoculations separately. Mr Blair must explain where he stands on this. Only then will parents feel more confident.
 

9/1/02 Private Eye
MMR: A STAB IN THE DARK

The government and medical establishment have only themselves to blame for the reports last weekend of an "alarming" and "dangerous" drop in the take-up of the MMR vaccine. The BSE scandal is still too fresh in everybody's mind for the public to accept that something is safe just because government scientific and health advisers and an expensive advertising campaign say it is. Last month's Medical Research Council (MRC) review of autism, which again declared that there was no evidence to support a link between the triple jab and autism, is just more of the same. In fact no has yet said there is a definite link. What Dr Andrew Wakefield and now other researchers here and abroad have uncovered is the possibility of link. The response of the medical establishment has been to force Wakefield out of his job rather than undertake meaningful research which might prove him wrong - for example, by initiating an international study comparing vaccinated with unvaccinated children. Nor does the MRC report recommend such a study. Given public alarm in Britain, fuelled by the Blair family's claims to privacy, another major disappointment is the MRC paper's failure to recommend proper monitoring and recording of autism rates in the UK. It suggests, from what figures are available, that the rate among children is now one in every 166. That is a huge leap from the official figure published in the Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry in 1988, which suggested the figure was one per 2,200 of the population.

What the MRC paper does suggest is that methodological differences between studies, changes in diagnostic practice and public and professional awareness are likely causes of the apparent increase. This begs a question, if diagnosis is better, why hasn't a huge increase in diagnosis in the adult population also been noticed or recorded? The report states only that the prevalence in the adult population is "not known", but doesn't suggest we find it out.

Yet in Shetland and the Scottish isles, for example, every diagnosed autistic child is now aged 13 or under. In fact in some areas where autism rates have been monitored, the figures are even more alarming. Cambridge researchers have found one autistic child per 100. A similar figure emerges from the local education authority in East Surry. Among boys the figure rises to one in 69.

Similar increases are reported in Europe: in Sweden, one in 141 in children with IQs of over 70; in Finland a four-fold increase from 1979 to 1994 among five to seven year olds. In the US, New Jersey reports an increase of 876 percent in eight years. Illinois a 627 percent increase in six years and a 1,200 percent increase in Miami.

Can this explosion - one US researcher, Edward Yazbak, now refers to it as "a silent epidemic" - really simply be better diagnosis? Or is it, as more and more scientists appear to believe, the result of some kind of external trigger or triggers perhaps acting on a genetic predisposition: exposure to drugs, viral infection, heavy metals... or MMR vaccine.
Autism Epidemic-----US Department of Education figures

1992/1993 1996/1997
Total Total % Increase

12,222 34,354 181%

1992/1993 1997/1998
Total Total % Increase

12,222 42,487 248%

1992/1993 1998/1999
Total Total % Increase

12,222 53,561 339%

1992/1993 1999/2000
Total Total % Increase

12,222 65,396 435%

1992/1993 2000/2001
Total Total % Increase

12,222 78,717 544%


Note: Total reflects 50 states, District of Columbia and Puerto Rico

Latest figures for year 2000/2001
http://www.ideadata.org/tables24th\ar_aa3.htm

http://www.IDEAdata.org/tables/ar_aa2.htm year 1999/2000

http://www.ideadata.org/

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/Research/ Data tables before
1999/2000 (AA2)

Note: 1992/1993 AA2 numbers are from hard copy I have from the US
Department of Education

Ray Gallup

Scientists have found new evidence to support fears that the MMR vaccine is causing children to develop autism and bowel disease, The Telegraph can reveal today. Specialists from Trinity College, Dublin, have detected the strain of measles virus used in the MMR jab in tissue samples from the inflamed intestines of 12 children, who each developed autism after receiving the injection. The results will add further weight to claims that MMR may be responsible for a rapid rise in autism in children over the past decade. The Department of Health has repeatedly dismissed concerns about its safety, saying epidemiological studies have failed to find a link to autism. It has infuriated worried parents by refusing to allow the alternative of single vaccines to be prescribed on the NHS. The work was carried out by Prof John O'Leary, a pathologist with a record of important discoveries in the field of virology. Although the finding does not prove that the MRR jab caused autism and bowel disease in the children, it raises urgent questions about the vaccine's role in their condition.  None of the children concerned had shown any sign of disease beforehand. The discovery comes days after the Government seized on a new study to bolster its claims that the MMR vaccine is safe. The review, from a commercial company which lists the Department of Health as one of its clients, did not, however, consider work published since 1998 by scientists concerned about MMR. Prof O'Leary's results have been made public in a precis of a scientific presentation released ahead of a meeting of the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland next month. It was greeted with alarm by parents last night.

Jackie Fletcher, of the parents' group JABS, said the findings had profound implications and must be taken seriously. "We have parents shouting that these problems are occurring and what do the Government and health chiefs do - they keep their heads buried in old reports not designed to identify these problems," she said. "No one is listening. Why?" Ann Hewitt, whose son Thomas, eight, has severe autism and bowel problems, learned earlier this year that Dr O'Leary had found measles virus in the boy's gut. She and scores of others who received the same news now want to know what is going on.

The new results follow a study by Prof O'Leary and his colleagues, reported in February, in which they found measles virus of unknown origin in gut biopsies from 75 of 91 autistic children with bowel problems. Measles virus was found in only five of 70 normal youngsters. The team now claims that the new study corroborates their earlier work linking measles virus with the condition and "indicates the origins of the virus to be vaccine strain".

Last night Visceral, a charity set up to fund research into autism and bowel disease, called for MMR to be suspended until studies establish just what the vaccine-strain virus is doing. MMR, which contains live measles mumps and rubella virus, was launched in the UK in 1988 and is given to infants at 12-15 months and four years. The samples tested in Dublin were from some of nearly 200 youngsters diagnosed with developmental disorder and "new variant inflammatory bowel disease" by doctors at the Royal Free Hospital, in London, where Dr Andrew Wakefield worked until he was ousted last December.

The controversy over MMR and autism began four years ago when Dr Wakefield and his colleagues reported in The Lancet on 12 children with autistic problems and bowel disease and revealed that the parents of eight of them had said their children regressed developmentally after receiving the MMR jab.

While the genetic code of the strain of measles virus used in MMR differs only minutely from that of the virus responsible for natural infections, Prof O'Leary and his colleagues were able to use a commercially produced molecular probe to distinguish the two. The probe was designed to detect a single difference in the genetic code of the viruses and to give off a fluorescent signal when it does so. The MMR row became so heated this year that Tony Blair, the Prime Minister - who has refused to say whether his two-year-old son Leo has had the MMR jab - accused Dr Wakefield and the media of "scaremongering" on the issue.

The chief medical officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, has indicated he would rather resign than abandon official policy on the three-in-one vaccine. Dr Wakefield said last night: "Prof O'Leary and colleagues have now provided what may prove to be the most important piece of evidence to date in the case against the MMR vaccine. Parents must at the very least be given a choice of single vaccines. "Not to do so in the face of these data and all the other evidence we have now published would be negligent in the extreme. It is not acceptable to assume that this vaccine virus is an innocent bystander if your concern is for the safety of the children." The Department of Health said that it had no plans to review the use of MMR. "This study, if true, does not prove that MMR causes the condition of autism just because the virus is present in the gut. Critical will be independent testing of the teams' samples, which has long been awaited," said a spokesman Scientists have found new evidence to support fears that the MMR vaccine is causing children to develop autism and bowel disease, The Telegraph can reveal today. Specialists from Trinity College, Dublin, have detected the strain of measles virus used in the MMR jab in tissue samples from the inflamed intestines of 12 children, who each developed autism after receiving the injection.

The results will add further weight to claims that MMR may be responsible for a rapid rise in autism in children over the past decade. The Department of Health has repeatedly dismissed concerns about its safety, saying epidemiological studies have failed to find a link to autism. It has infuriated worried parents by refusing to allow the alternative of single vaccines to be prescribed on the NHS. The work was carried out by Prof John O'Leary, a pathologist with a record of important discoveries in the field of virology. Although the finding does not prove that the MRR jab caused autism and bowel disease in the children, it raises urgent questions about the vaccine's role in their condition.

None of the children concerned had shown any sign of disease beforehand. The discovery comes days after the Government seized on a new study to bolster its claims that the MMR vaccine is safe. The review, from a commercial company which lists the Department of Health as one of its clients, did not, however, consider work published since 1998 by scientists concerned about MMR.

Prof O'Leary's results have been made public in a precis of a scientific presentation released ahead of a meeting of the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland next month. It was greeted with alarm by parents last night. Jackie Fletcher, of the parents' group JABS, said the findings had profound implications and must be taken seriously. "We have parents shouting that these problems are occuring and what do the Government and health chiefs do - they keep their heads buried in old reports not designed to identify these problems," she said. "No one is listening. Why?"

Ann Hewitt, whose son Thomas, eight, has severe autism and bowel problems, learned earlier this year that Dr O'Leary had found measles virus in the boy's gut. She and scores of others who received the same news now want to know what is going on. The new results follow a study by Prof O'Leary and his colleagues, reported in February, in which they found measles virus of unknown origin in gut biopsies from 75 of 91 autistic children with bowel problems.

Measles virus was found in only five of 70 normal youngsters. The team now claims that the new study corroborates their earlier work linking measles virus with the condition and "indicates the origins of the virus to be vaccine strain". Last night Visceral, a charity set up to fund research into autism and bowel disease, called for MMR to be suspended until studies establish just what the vaccine-strain virus is doing. MMR, which contains live measles mumps and rubella virus, was launched in the UK in 1988 and is given to infants at 12-15 months and four years.

The samples tested in Dublin were from some of nearly 200 youngsters diagnosed with developmental disorder and "new variant inflammatory bowel disease" by doctors at the Royal Free Hospital, in London, where Dr Andrew Wakefield worked until he was ousted last December. The controversy over MMR and autism began four years ago when Dr Wakefield and his colleagues reported in The Lancet on 12 children with autistic problems and bowel disease and revealed that the parents of eight of them had said their children regressed developmentally after receiving the MMR jab.

While the genetic code of the strain of measles virus used in MMR differs only minutely from that of the virus responsible for natural infections, Prof O'Leary and his colleagues were able to use a commercially produced molecular probe to distinguish the two. The probe was designed to detect a single difference in the genetic code of the viruses and to give off a fluorescent signal when it does so. The MMR row became so heated this year that Tony Blair, the Prime Minister - who has refused to say whether his two-year-old son Leo has had the MMR jab - accused Dr Wakefield and the media of "scaremongering" on the issue.

The chief medical officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, has indicated he would rather resign than abandon official policy on the three-in-one vaccine. Dr Wakefield said last night: "Prof O'Leary and colleagues have now provided what may prove to be the most important piece of evidence to date in the case against the MMR vaccine. Parents must at the very least be given a choice of single vaccines.

"Not to do so in the face of these data and all the other evidence we have now published would be negligent in the extreme. It is not acceptable to assume that this vaccine virus is an innocent bystander if your concern is for the safety of the children." The Department of Health said that it had no plans to review the use of MMR. "This study, if true, does not prove that MMR causes the condition of autism just because the virus is present in the gut. Critical will be independent testing of the teams' samples, which has long been awaited," said a spokesman.

MMR: Are you reassured the vaccine is safe?


The most in-depth analysis to date has cleared the controversial MMR vaccine of any link to autism or bowel disease. The researchers say their findings provide clear reassurance for patients and health professionals that the combined jab for measles, mumps and rubella is safe. There has been a sharp drop in the number of parents prepared to give their children the MMR vaccination because they're worried about a possible link with autism and inflammatory bowel disease.

But a team led by Dr Anna Donald and Dr Vivek Muthu have examined research into MMR from 180 countries around the world and now claim the vaccine is completely safe. Are you reassured about the safety of the MMR vaccine? Has the latest evidence changed your mind? Would you give your child the vaccine?

The finger of suspicion has been pointed at MMR

It is good news that researchers have found no link between MMR and autism but the research cannot end there. Parents will not be reassured until a valid reason for the sharp rise in cases of autism is found. The finger of suspicion has been pointed at MMR. Without any alternative suspect it will stay there. Steve Cahill, England Safe is a relative term in the healthcare field. One must weigh the benefits vs the possible side effects. In the case of MMR, its usage in millions of patients in many countries has proved its safety. TFB, USA

How can the authors of this latest report claim that it proves anything, if, as they claim, the research that it reviews is flawed? Such an approach only demonstrates they found the current evidence for the MMR/autism link hypothesis unpersuasive.
Brian, UK

So, it's safe again is it? Verified safe by a set of DoH doctors. Are these the same doctors who are the shareholders of the company that manufacturers this vaccine then I wonder? After all, as long as the drug company is profitable, what does it really matter if my son becomes autistic? Sorry Mr Blair, the damage is done.
Geoff Hirst, Scotland

The original so-called research that 'proved' a problem with MMR does not stand up to scrutiny by anyone other than the media and a few stupid parents who believe what they see in print. The rise in autism is acknowledged to be in a large part due to better and different ways of diagnosis.
Barry P, England

 Why should anyone believe it is safe?
 
 If the vaccine is so safe, when will Tony confirm that Leo has had the jab? By refusing to comment it seems like he has something to hide - and if the Prime Minister is refusing the jab that his government is trying to force on everyone else, why should anyone believe it is safe?
Ian, UK

No one believes the Government any more, especially when business interests are put on the line. The reason the MMR is being pushed as 'safe' is to save money for the drug companies who have invested in a product and want to see a profit. It is unfair, and immoral, to take the decision away from parents how they will protect their children.
Peter Finch, UK

There is overwhelming evidence this vaccine is safe. In my opinion, it is far more likely that the rise is autism and other similar childhood problems are down to women who refuse to breastfeed (for whatever reason), as well as smoking, drinking, poor diet and taking medicines, which may have unknown, but subtle, side effects on unborn
children. The care of a baby needs to start way before it is born!!!
Chris Chitty, UK


Mail on Sunday 19th May 2002
Blair still silent over Leo as parents refusing jab face having medical notes scrutinized

Labour accused of double standards on MMR rules
By Rachel Ellis, Medical Correspondent

The Tories accused Tony Blair of double standards last night over new rules which could let the Government identify parents who will not allow their children to have the controversial MMR jab. The Prime Minister has refused to reveal whether his son Leo , who will be two tomorrow, has received the triple measles, mumps and rubella jab which has been linked to autism and bowel disease.

He claims under patient confidentiality rules that he has no obligation to reveal his family's private medical details. But regulations expected to be approved in the House of Lords this week mean that Ministers will be able to access patient's medical records without their consent. If the number given MMR continues to fall and there is a measles epidemic, for example, the Health Secretary could demand patient records to identify areas of low uptake. If doctors, nurses or other health workers refused, they could be fined £5,000.

Last night Tory health spokesman Dr Liam Fox accused Mr Blair of hiding behind patient confidentiality when it suited him.

'It's bizarre that the Prime Minister should say that the common-law defence of confidentiality is one which he thinks is suitable and necessary in the case of his own family and then to come forward with legislation which will effectively abolish it,' Dr Fox said. He warned that the move could mean that the Blair's medical records were accessed too. And he condemned the fact that the Health Secretary would be able to decide who should have access to private medical records and to punish doctors who failed to hand them over.

'Absolutely no justification has been given for taking these wide powers,' he said. 'The Secretary of State will be prosecutor, judge and jury.'

The Department of Health stressed that patient information will be kept strictly confidential and only health organisations will be able to access it for research or monitoring immunisation programmes, outbreaks of infectious diseases and adverse reactions to vaccines and medicines. Private companies - including pharmaceutical and insurance companies - will not be allowed the data, it said. A spokeswoman added: 'Who can have this information will be very restricted. It will be available only in limited circumstances to protect public health and sustain essential NHS activity and for research. 'If there was a severe problem with the uptake of MMR and their was a risk of an epidemic, that could be an example. There is no way the records will be made public'. Organisations who want access to patient records will have to apply to the Patient Information Advisory Group - an independent, statutory watchdog whose members represent patient's groups, healthcare professionals and regulatory bodies.

However, the regulations raise concerns that confidential information will be passed between Government departments. A poll of 1,000 people for the Patients' Association revealed that 95 per cent of patients do not wantcivil servants to have access to their records without their consent.

Simon Williams, of the Association, said: ' We all have to be confident that if we discuss matters of great personal detail with a health professional, this remains private. We are not confident at the safeguards introduced to ensure patient information is not misused.' Meanwhile, a former Government scientific adviser had condemned Labour's handling of the MMR crisis. Latest figures show that only 70 per cent of toddlers due to have the jab in March did so - down six per cent since the end of last year and well below the target of 95 per cent.

Lord May said the current crisis was caused by the 'excessively confident assertion that there is no risk attached to MMR rather than what I believe to be correct, that there may be a small risk'.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

Who will stop Big Brother delving into our private lives?

This Government tell us very little about itself. It claims that its privacy is infringed whenever any Minister is accused of hypocrisy. Yet it seeks to know more and more about us, now seeking access to our detailed and confidential medical records, without our knowledge or consent. What an odd contrast this makes with the Prime Minister's continued refusal to tell us if his youngest son has been given the controversial MMR injection which his Government actively urges on every parent of a small child. We may not know if Leo Blair has received the MMR, but Tony Blair and his Ministers may be told if your child has had the jab.

Of course, the state needs to know specific things about us for specific purposes. But increasingly, our rulers seem to want to amass private information, perhaps because of the increased power it gives them over our lives. They are already talking about using the benefit system to discipline people whose behaviour they do not like. It is only a short step from this to withdrawing benefits, school places or driving licences from those who refuse to give their children the MMR vaccine.

We know that they would like us to be registered and issued with identity tags. We know that they want Government agencies to be able to share their files with each other, giving thousands of petty officials unwarranted knowledge about the intimate details of the lives of law-abiding citizens.

Either there is such a thing as privacy or there is not. It is outrageous that Mr Blair should piously invoke his right to privacy when faced with an inconvenient question, while compelling us to answer the same question without any control over what is done with the information. Why should we trust Government officials with the most secret details of our lives when the head of the Government will not even say if he is following his own advice on immunisation? The word 'minister' actually means 'servant', not boss. This Big Brother behaviour is better suited to a dictatorship than a democracy. Luckily, we still have a House of Lords that can stand up to Downing Street. They should do so on this issue.

Telegraph Magazine 8 June 2002

MMR: who to believe?
The whistleblower, the medical establishment and the parents put their case One in 86 primary-school children in the UK has autism, compared with one in 2,200 in 1988. Dr Andrew Wakefield is among those who believe that this rise is linked with the MMR vaccine, yet the Government is convinced of its safety. Who are we to believe?

Special report by Justine Picardie

On a quiet suburban road in south-west London, not far from the Thames, there is a neat, white-painted detached house, behind a clipped laurel hedge. It is a comfortable family home, with children''s bicycles at the front, and a barbeque in the back garden; the kind of place where you assume ordinary life goes on, undisturbed by the occasional roar of aircraft in the sky overhead, as they make their descent towards Heathrow.

In this house, lives Dr Andrew Wakefield, his wife, Carmel, who is also a doctor, and their four children: a likeable, lively family, the kind you would be happy to have as friends. But in the past year, their lives have been turned upside down, and this summer they are leaving their home and moving to the States, because Dr Wakefield can no longer continue his work in this country. His crime? To question the safety of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

Now, you've probably read something about this subject before: the front-page newspaper reports earlier this year, asking questions about the links between MMR and autism; and the replies from the Department of Health, damning Dr Wakefield as a lone, maverick doctor whose research could not be replicated. You've thought about your own children, perhaps, or grandchildren, and maybe wondered why you never used to hear about autism 15 or 20 years ago, and why now everyone seems to know someone with an autistic child. Then you probably turn the page, because the story seems so unlikely - how can a vaccine designed to promote good health, in fact damage a child? - and anyway, news moves on, as we do. But as is so often the case, there is a longer, more intriguing story behind the headlines. Why, for instance, has Dr Wakefield's telephone been tapped? (An intercept on his home number was discovered last year by a telecom engineer, who had been trying to work out why the Wakefield's BT burglar alarm kept going off for no apparent reason.) Why, too, do his supporters in the medical establishment fear speaking out openly on the issue, preferring secret meetings and off-the-record briefings? And why do so many parents of autistic children believe there has been a concerted cover-up of evidence suggesting a possible link between the vaccine and their children''s condition?

Dr Wakefield himself (a 45-year-old surgeon and consultant gastroenterologist whose research at the Royal Free Hospital in London was formerly commended for its ''elegance'' - before he made his controversial mention of MMR) believes that money lies at the heart of the matter. After all, he points out, a court case involving more than 1,000 children whose parents believe they have been damaged by the vaccine will be heard against the vaccine manufacturers in this country at the end of next year; and similar actions are proceeding in America. If these court actions are successful, he says (and the drug companies have not yet managed to have them struck out, despite repeated efforts to do so), ''There is potentially a massive liability, that would bankrupt the vaccine manufacturers. In California last year, there were 3,000 new diagnoses of autism; the great majority of those MMR-related. If it can be shown that the drug companies knew there were problems [with the vaccine] but had done nothing, then the awards increase astronomically. We could be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.'' (Already in the US more vaccine damage payments are made after MMR than any other vaccine, and the total payments to date are close to $1 billion.) As he speaks, you can hear the tiredness in his voice, and his face is grey with exhaustion. The phone rings constantly, for Dr Wakefield has become a pivotal figure for many in the parents'' campaign; a handsome, glossy-haired charismatic hero to families of autistic children, in this country and America, yet a heretic to those scientists and civil servants who disagree with him. The one thing he cannot be described as is 'lone': not that this was ever the case, given that his original paper in the Lancet, published in 1998, that raised the possibility of a connection between MMR and autism, was co-authored by 12 other Royal Free researchers, including Professor John Walker-Smith, one of the most distinguished paediatric gastroenterologists in the country. (Prof Walker-Smith, who has now retired from his chair at the Royal Free, refused to comment to the press when the paper was published; but in a letter earlier this year to the Lancet, he wrote, ''I continue to support the MMR vaccine (but) I am also concerned that further urgent research is needed to resolve the genuine concerns of parents who associate MMR with the onset of autism and to try to identify whether there are factors that may place a very small but important group of children at risk of such a disorder.'') In fact, serious concerns about the jab had already been raised over the years - in Japan, after an outbreak of vaccine-related meningitis (MMR has now been completely withdrawn in Japan in favour of single shots); and in Canada (where it is still administered, in a different form), for the same reason.

Dr Wakefield, the son of a neurologist and a GP - had spent some time working in Canada, before returning here to research the link between Crohn's disease (a chronic inflammatory bowel disorder) and the measles vaccine. In 1997, after he, along with several other researchers, published a paper in the Lancet on the subject, he was contacted by the mother of an autistic child, Rosemary Kessick, who had been told about his work by another mother, Jackie Fletcher, who had read about it on the internet. Both women had strong suspicions that their sons'' autism had been caused by MMR vaccinations; and Kessick, a former business analyst, decided that Wakefield''s research might provide more of a clue. ''In the week after the paper was published, I got another five calls from different mothers, all saying the same thing.'' says Dr Wakefield. ''These were not rabid, anti-vaccine crazies, but highly articulate, professional people saying, ''This is what happened, my child was normal, then they had MMR, and then they lost all their skills, they became autistic, and they got bowel symptoms - bloating, pains, diarrhoea, weight loss.''

When Dr Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free began to examine the children, ''we didn''t necessarily expect to find anything, but when we looked, we did, and we were very, very surprised.'' As more children were seen, Dr Wakefield developed a hypothesis that the measles virus in the MMR vaccine, perhaps given impetus by its combination with two other live viruses, was somehow damaging the gut of certain, susceptible children, allowing toxins to escape from the leaky gut and into the brain. In February 1998, the Royal Free team therefore published their paper in the Lancet, describing 12 children they had examined who appeared to suffer from a new form of bowel disease, possibly triggered by the MMR vaccine, that could be linked with autism. At a press conference to launch their study, Dr Wakefield also announced his belief that the Government should give parents the choice of single mumps, measles and rubella vaccines, in case the combination of live viruses in MMR was contributing to the problem. ''And then there was uproar,'' he recalls, ''and some of my other Royal Free colleagues said, ''Why did you mention MMR?'' And I said, ''I'm not in the business of censoring the parents'' story.'' It would have been taking a vital component out of the story, and removing it for the sake of convenience.'' In the months that followed, and as the arguments became more polarised, Dr Wakefield could not ignore the parents'' belief that MMR was implicated in their children's autism. ''We never pretended to have all the answers,'' he says, ''We're just beginning to understand. But at every step, the parents have proved to be right, and proven vastly superior to the medical dogma in terms of its reliability and trustworthiness.''

In fact, it was the father of an autistic boy - a lecturer in pharmacy at Sunderland University named Paul Shattock - who was one of the first to develop a theory that autism might be linked to the gut, long before the doctors at Royal Free became involved. Shattock - a charming, silver-haired man with a nice line in wry self-deprecation - now runs the Autism Research Unit out of a tiny office at the university, on a shoestring budget. (''Funnily enough, the drug companies don't seem to want to give us any research grants,'' he says dryly.) Unlike the new generation of autistic children seen at the Royal Free (who have 'regressive' or 'late-onset autism'), his son, born in 1970, had 'classic autism', present from birth; but as part of Shattock's long-term campaign to provide better recognition and services for his child and many others, he began to become interested in the issue as to whether diet (specifically excluding gluten and dairy products) might help. ''I was told I wasn't objective, as the parent of an autistic child,'' he explains, ''yet without parents, there would be no services, no research in this country. It was parents who fought the original orthodoxy that autism is caused by bad mothers, 'the refrigerator mother' who causes the autistic child to reject contact with others.''
(He is referring, here, to the theories advanced by Leo Kanner, a child psychiatrist who identified a group of 11 children in 1943 as having what he saw as a new mental illness, characterised by self-absorbed detachment from others. Kanner coined the phrase 'autistic', from the Greek word 'auto', meaning self.) Shattock had set up a database on autism in the early Eighties, ''I didn't believe the stuff other parents were saying about diet, to begin with - but I checked it out, and discovered yes, it made sense: the incomplete digestion of gluten and casein produced these morphine-like compounds.'' He then began to explore the possibility that the compounds - known as opioids - got into the blood, and crossed into the brain, where they disrupted the central nervous system. Similarly, he says, with characteristic candour, ''I didn't believe the stories about MMR when I first heard about them - I'm a very orthodox pharmacist.'' But as he painstakingly logged more and more case histories - 7,000 in total, now - it seemed to him that perhaps 10 per cent were occurring after MMR vaccination. ''These kids appear to have different symptoms to classic autism'' - for a start, they were developing completely normally, with no sign of neurological problems until vaccination - and so in 1996, I said to the Department of Health, 'There''s something in this, can we talk?' They refused.'' The Department of Health's lack of interest is, perhaps, surprising: not only because of the alarming rise in the incidence of autism (one in 86 primary-school children now has autism, according to a report by the National Autistic Society, compared with one in 2,200 in 1988), but also given that there had already proved to be problems with MMR.
The vaccine was launched in this country in 1988, just as doctors in Canada had raised alarms that there could be a problem with a version of MMR that contained a particular strain of the mumps virus, known as the Urabe strain. By February 1988, the Canadians had identified eight suspicious cases of meningitis in children who had recently received MMR vaccinations; as a result, the Urabe strain vaccine was withdrawn in Canada, pending further investigations. Despite that, in October 1988, public health officials in the UK Department of Health went ahead with an MMR campaign using two vaccines - Pluserix and Immravax - which each contained the Urabe mumps virus, alongside live measles and rubella. Even when the Canadian ban on Urabe was made permanent in May 1990, Britain did not follow suit until September 1992. Jackie Fletcher's son Robert was one of those vaccinated with Immravax -and he received his MMR injection in November 1992, more than two months after it should have been withdrawn. ''Up until then,'' she says, ''he was fine, very healthy. Then he had his MMR at 13 months, along with a Hib (meningitis) jab, and 10 days later, he went into a huge fit. His eyes rolled into his head, his little arms and legs were twitching, he was very hot, so I stripped him off, but he was even worse after he stopped the fit - shallow, rasping breathing. I thought he was dying.'' In casualty, as Robert lay unconscious and covered in blotches, ''I said something to a doctor about the vaccinations, and he said, 'Oh nonsense'. He just shrugged it off. I raised it again the next day with doctors on the ward round, and they said his ears were slightly pink, so it was a possible ear infection.'' But as time went on, Robert had more and more fits, and was eventually diagnosed with epilepsy the following year. Now, at 10, he has autistic traits, and a mental age of 14 months. The Fletcher's were not prepared to accept the repeated assurances that Robert's problems were nothing to do with the vaccination, and Jackie, a former bank clerk with a meticulous approach to research, started to find out more. During the course of many more emergency hospital admissions for Robert, they met other families in casualty who said that their children had just had fits after receiving MMR. Still, the consultant neurologists denied that the vaccination might be implicated, ''and then one of our friends downloaded some information from the vaccine manufacturer on the internet, and lo and behold, the drug company itself mentioned the possibility of seizures and neurological damage.'' Eventually, Jackie and her husband, a transport engineer for Cheshire County Council, managed to track down the batch number for the vaccine that Robert had received, as well as discovering for themselves what no doctor had thought to tell them: that it contained the Urabe mumps strain, and should have never have been injected into their son. By then, they were in touch with five other families who also believed their children had reacted to the vaccine, and after a short paragraph appeared in the local free paper about their experiences, they were contacted by another 30 families in the same small local catchment area. ''They all repeated what the people we had met in the hospital had said - their children had had fits eight, nine, 10 days after the jab. They had speech problems, learning difficulties.'' On the advice of their local MP, Ian McCartney - then shadow health minister - an action group was set up, called Jabs. Jackie, and others involved, continued with their research, discovering that MMR had been banned in Japan in 1993 owing to reported neurological problems; and that a Finnish study, widely quoted by the Department of Health in support of MMR safety, had been partly funded by one of the vaccine manufacturers, Merck. As more and more letters and emails and phone calls flooded into Jabs, ''we noticed a number of families coming to us, saying that their autistic children had also been suffering from long-term 'toddler diarrhoea'.'' Given that this was usually dismissed by doctors as unimportant or irrelevant, Jackie Fletcher seized on Andrew Wakefield as someone who might be able to help these children. ''Our own experience with different consultants involved with Robert''s complex problems was that each specialist was only interested in one aspect of our child''s health. The ear, nose and throat specialist was not interested in his immune system problems or epilepsy; the neurologist dealing with his epilepsy wasn''t interested in his repeated ear infections. Andrew Wakefield was like a breath of fresh air after being in a stagnant, air-conditioned room.'' It's an account you hear echoed over and over again by other parents, such as Vivian McKelvey, whose son Alec received the same brand of MMR vaccine as Jackie''s child. ''Other doctors had told me that the fact my son developed autism and bowel problems after MMR was purely coincidental, that I was just desperately searching for any cause, that in fact he had no real bowel problems at all. It took a year for him to be seen at the Royal Free, where they discovered he had colitis and inflammatory bowel disease. Until then, no one had listened to me. Since then, he''s been getting treatment, which has made a huge difference to our lives.'' To his exasperated employers at the Royal Free, however, Dr Wakefield was an embarrassment, held by them, (not to mention the Department of Health) to be largely responsible for the falling uptake of MMR vaccine in the UK. According to Brent Taylor, Professor of Community Child Health at the Royal Free, and co-author of several epidemiological studies that have found no link between MMR, autism, and bowel disease, ''Everyone has always known that children with developmental problems - cerebral palsy, Down's Syndrome, and particularly autism - have bowel problems.'' He believes that this is caused by 'funny nervous systems', possibly exacerbated by what he describes as 'abnormal diets': whether of their own choosing (''I heard about one child who was eating sawdust or sand, in quite large quantities'') or of their parent's making. ''There''s not a shred of scientific evidence that the gluten- and casein-free diets has any direct therapeutic effect,'' he says. ''These restricted diets need to be very carefully supervised by a dietician, and often they''re not, and we really don¹t know what side effects they might be causing.'' As for the apparent rise in cases of autism: Professor Taylor thinks this is the result of better diagnosis; while the widespread concern expressed by parents that vaccination may have triggered their children''s autism is down to the irrational belief ''that there must be something that has caused it. We listen to what parents say, but it does have to be interpreted, based on wider experience or different understandings.''

Thus it was that by the beginning of the year Dr Wakefield's work was held to be ''no longer in line with the department of medicine's research strategy'' at the Royal Free. But at the same time he published further research, in conjunction with Professor John O'Leary at Trinity College, Dublin, revealing the presence of the measles virus in the gut of 75 of 91 autistic children with bowel disease. No mention was made by Professor O'Leary in the paper of whether or not the children had received the MMR vaccine (in fact, as Dr Wakefield now reveals, ''more than 95 per cent of those who had the virus in their gut had MMR as their only documented exposure to measles''), because it was simply too controversial. ''As soon as you include vaccination in there,'' says Dr Wakefield, ''you raise hackles, and people treat the paper differently.''

None the less, David Salisbury, head of immunisation policy at the Department of Health, and Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer, continue to emphasise the safety of MMR, while pouring scorn on the research of anyone who disagrees. As for the past problems with Pluserix and Immravax, Salisbury (who was instrumental in the introduction of MMR in 1988) accepts that the Urabe vaccine did cause some cases of meningitis, but points out that ''These particular children had a viral meningitis. Viral meningitis is usually mild, self-limiting, and gets better on its own''. He is as scathing about the latest O''Leary paper as he was about Dr Wakefield''s earlier work: ''I''ve seen far more published work that says they cannot find the measles virus [in the gut]''; and, like Prof Taylor, believes Dr Wakefield found no real evidence of inflammatory bowel disease in autistic children. He describes their symptoms, somewhat dismissively, as 'constipation and diarrhoea'; as to the cause, ''If you ask people who look after children with autism, they will tell you these children have bizarre eating habits''.

Which is leaves us where, exactly? Well, each side continues to attack the other''s methods of research (Dr Wakefield's suuporter''s for example, have any number of detailed criticisms of Prof Taylor's reports); but aside from the arcane scientific and medical disputes, this is when the story gets even more murky, and doctors at a very senior level insist on talking off the record (''We've all seen what happened to Andrew Wakefield, and we don't want our careers destroyed'', they say, with understandable caution). As the inevitable conspiracy theories emerge, you start hearing dark tales of the bugging devices found in surgeries that continue to offer single vaccines; about apparently inexplicable burglaries, where cash and computer equipment is left untouched, but records containing names of parents'' groups go missing. These occurrences, which are now under police investigation, may of course be entirely coincidental; and as for all the conspiracy theories -perhaps they are no more than the overheated product of too many viewings of Hollywood films such as The Insider and Erin Brockovitch. (It's not hard to imagine Russell Crowe playing Dr Wakefield, opposite Julia Roberts as a feisty single mother fighting for justice for her child.) But if we put the conspiracy theories aside, what begins to emerge, through all the claims and counter-claims, and the statistics that seem to prove both sides of the MMR battle, is an undercurrent of unease about the way the debate is being conducted. According to one senior paediatrician I spoke to, ''You can still appreciate the benefits of MMR for the majority of children, whilst accepting that there are a minority who may well be damaged by it.'' Yet that position, she says, is increasingly difficult to maintain in a profession where so much medical research is paid for by drug companies. ''The older and wiser I get, the more I realise that these companies are hugely wealthy, and therefore hugely powerful''. She, like others, points out that Dr Wakefield and O'Leary are unusual in not having their research funded by vaccine manufacturers; indeed, Dr Elizabeth Miller, of the Public Health Laboratory Service, Brent Taylor's co-author, and a government advisor on vaccination policy, has received funding in the past from a number of companies, including SmithKline Beecham (one of the manufacturers of the Urabe strain of MMR), though this money goes to her department rather than to her directly. Taylor - who has remained independent from the vaccine manufacturers - admits this situation may 'raise concerns'. Nevertheless, he says, laughing heartily, ''I don't believe drug companies are in the business of promoting medicines that will damage children. It cannot be to their advantage.''

Why, then, asks Jackie Fletcher, and several doctors who prefer to remain anonymous, did SmithKline Beecham go on to sell its Urabe strain of MMR vaccines to Brazil, after they were withdrawn in Canada and the UK? (A paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology documents the resulting outbreak of aseptic meningitis following a mass immunisation day in Brazil in 1997.) A spokesman for SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline) says that it was pointed out to the health authorities in Brazil that the Urabe vaccine had been withdrawn elsewhere, but ''they chose to use it because they felt the health benefits outweighed the risks''. Similar concerns have been raised by Dr Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, who has also drawn attention to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). This is a little known yet immensely powerful quango made up of a select group of doctors and scientists who provide advice to the Department of Health - many of whom have professional and personal links with the vaccine manufacturers, including SmithKline shareholdings and consultancy fees.

It is, yet again, the parents of autistic children who have drawn attention to these facts - one man in particular: David Thrower, whose son Oliver received a single measles vaccine at 14 months, and the MMR at the age of 4. Oliver, ''a very advanced little boy until the vaccination'', is now 15,doubly incontinent, and chronically sleepless. ''It's like defusing a bomb each day,'' says Thrower, who gave up his work as a transport planner in Warrington to care for his son. Despite the exhaustion, however, Thrower has also found time to amass an enormous amount of information on the MMR/autism issue, including some of the potential conflict of interests held by members of the JCVI, as well as that of another influential Government quango, the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM). In one of Thrower''s detailed reports that he has submitted to anyone who might listen, he points out that ''37 members of the CSM have a total of 188 separate financial links with the pharmaceuticals industry, including 82 separate personal declared links. These include shares, fees, consultancies, research grants and non-executive directorships.'' As for the JCVI: in 1999 four members had SmithKline Beecham interests, while others had links with Glaxo Wellcome (the two companies subsequently merged to become GlaxoSmithKline). These links range from research grants to shareholdings. Dr Nicholson has also pointed out that the equally influential Medical Research Council committee, which decided that no further research was needed into the links between MMR and autism, included three members (out of 14) who are paid consultants for the vaccine manufacturers in the forthcoming legal case; while the committee''s chairman is a Glaxo-Wellcome shareholder. He remains concerned about the continuing financial links between the vaccine manufacturers and Government advisers on the CSM and the JCVI. Yet when I put these points to Yvette Cooper, the health minister responsible for immunisation policy, she says with the conviction that has made her a New Labour star, ''I find it astonishing that any of it should cast doubt on the integrity of their review.'' She remains convinced of the safety of MMR, and its continuing benefit to children''s health: ''I am not a medical scientist, but when you get the MRC and independent bodies saying there is no evidence to show a link [between MMR and autism], that''s the conclusion, based on the science, that I have to respect.'' So, the vaccination programme will continue, but it seems unlikely that the doubts will disappear. As I talked to David Thrower in his study, surrounded by the papers he has painstakingly compiled - and will continue to amass he points out of the window, across another neat suburban garden. ''Two autistic girls live over there,'' he says, ''which means there are three autistic children within 50 yards. It used to be so rare when we were growing up - no one knew anyone with autism, but now everyone knows someone. Of course, the Department of Health says it's just better recognition, better diagnosis, but that can't be the whole picture.'' He clicks on his computer, and opens yet another document emailed to him from the US, revealing increases of 644 per cent in new cases of autism across America (in California the numbers have risen from 1,605 autistic children in 1992-3 to 10,557 in 2000-2001). ''Not that anyone will pay any attention to this,'' he says, bitterly. ''We're given a very comforting lullaby, that if a child has a minor reaction after the MMR, well, it might have been caused by the vaccine - but if it's serious, the vaccine can't possibly be to blame. So now the Department of Health has put together this nice little jigsaw saying, MMR is completely safe - but there is an extra piece, which the Department of Health can''t explain away, and that''s our children. And they''re not going to go away.''

Sunday Times 23/6/02
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-335181,00.html

The Sunday Times - Britain

June 23, 2002

Stars join Hornby in MMR crusade Adam Nathan and Rosie Waterhouse ONE of Britain's leading authors and several Hollywood stars have grouped together to fund research into possible links between the MMR vaccine and the reported rise in the incidence of autism. Nick Hornby, whose books Fever Pitch and High Fidelity won him international fame, has given £11,000 to the British charity Visceral, which is funding research into the controversial triple jab.

The author, who has an autistic eight-year-old son, has been joined by film stars including John Travolta, Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis. Travolta, the star of Pulp Fiction and Saturday Night Fever, and his wife Kelly Preston helped to raise more than £30,000 for Visceral through a sponsored walk and a dinner in Florida last September by the Autism Autoimmunity Project. His Hollywood colleagues donated signed pictures of themselves that were auctioned at similar events, raising £15,000.

Visceral is investigating alleged links between the MMR vaccine, which gives protection against measles, mumps and rubella, and autism. The reported incidence of autism has risen sharply in the West in recent years, with 60 out of every 10,000 children under eight in Britain now being diagnosed with an "autistic spectrum disorder".

While some experts argue that it is changes in the definition of autism to include people with quite mild learning difficulties that has led to the increase, others suspect the measles component of the MMR vaccine.
Visceral's medical director is Dr Andrew Wakefield, the British consultant who, in a paper published in The Lancet in 1998, first suggested an association between MMR, bowel disorders and autism. Vilified for his work at the Royal Free hospital in London, Wakefield now lives in America where autism has become the latest cause to be taken up by Hollywood.

Last week Wakefield presented a paper to a congressional hearing in Washington that he claimed supported a link between MMR and autism. The research by his colleague Dr John O'Leary, professor of pathology at Trinity College Dublin, was part-funded by Visceral and covered 12 children. It suggests that the same measles strain used in the MMR vaccine is present in the gut of some autistic children.

The hearing was examining whether the MMR jab and the presence of mercury in some vaccines may be to blame. Dr Arthur Krigsman, a paediatric gastro-intestinal consultant at Lenox Hill hospital, New York, told the hearing he had conducted tests on 43 autistic children and found 90% of them had the same inflammatory bowel diseases as Wakefield reported in children he examined at the Royal Free hospital in London four years ago.

His findings are significant because they are the first independent corroboration of much of Wakefield's work.

However, the Dublin research by O'Leary has been rapidly dismissed by an expert from the World Health Organisation. He claimed that the technique used by O'Leary was flawed. The Department of Health vigorously denies any link between the MMR jab and autism. It points to a study published in the British Medical Journal two weeks ago which reviewed all published evidence and concluded that there was no link.

The department also points out that concern about MMR has led to falling take-up rates of the vaccine, which has led to several potentially fatal outbreaks of measles. Visceral said last week that fundraising would continue. Robert Sawyer, its chief executive, confirmed that US money had been the key to the continuation of Wakefield's work.

In September, Medical Interventions for Autism, an American charity that funds Visceral, will stage a celebrity golf tournament with the Detroit Red Wings, the champion ice-hockey team, which it hopes will raise more than £300,000.

The charity plans to raise more than £5m to research the effects of MMR on the brain over the next three years. To achieve this it is targeting celebrities known for their support of children's illnesses.

For example, Neil Young, the rock star whose son suffers from cerebral palsy, has been approached to stage a charity concert in Chicago next year that could raise £200,000. Autism campaigners hope that Young's most famous song, The Needle and the Damage Done, could become their anthem. However, Young has not yet agreed to the concert.

Hornby could not be contacted for comment on his donation to Visceral. Virginia Bovell, the author's former wife, is a close friend of Lyndsey Booth, Cherie Blair's sister and a former lawyer who now works as a homeopath and is a campaigner for the rights of autistic children. Tony Blair stoked rumours last year that his youngest son, Leo, had not had the MMR jab by refusing to confirm - on grounds of privacy - that he had. This further fuelled public anxiety over the safety of the triple vaccine.

http://libnt2.lib.tcu.edu/staff/lruede/singhmeasles2.html


Serological Detection of Measles Virus in Relation to Autoimmunity in Autism
102nd General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology
May 19-23, 2002, Salt Lake City, Utah, Presentation V-5

V.K. Singh, R.L. Jensen, J. J. Bradstreet
Utah State University and the International Child Development Resource Center

Abstract: Autoimmunity to brain myelin protein (MBP) secondary to a measles infection may cause autistic regression in some children with this neurodevelopmental disorder. We hypothesized that measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) immunization is a source of measles infection; hence the serological link between MMR and MBP antibodies might exist in autistic children. To test the hypothesis, we conducted a serological study of MBP, MMR and neuron-axon filament protein (NAFP) in serum and cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) of autistic children. Antibodies were assayed by immunoblotting with MBP, NAFP and MMR as antigens. We found that a significant number of autistic children had antibodies to MBP (up to 88% positive) and antibodies to MMR (up to 65% positive), but not to NAFP. Normal children did not harbor these antibodies. Moreover, the analysis of paired samples (serum and CSF) from 7 autistic children also revealed a high degree of serological association between MMR and MBP: 50% of CSF had MMR antibodies, 86% of CSF had MBP antibodies, 75% of sera had MMR antibodies and 100% of sera had MBP antibodies. Therefore, as indicated by paired analysis of serum and CSF samples, there is a strong correlation between MMR antibodies and MBP autoantibodies in autism. By using monoclonal antibodies, we characterized that the MMR antibodies are due to the measles subunit, but not due to mumps or rubella subunits, of the polyvalent vaccine. Furthermore, the MMR and MBP antibodies are not cross-reactive because the pre-incubation of MBP with MMR did not block the binding of MBP antibodies. In light of the new evidence presented here, we suggest that the MMR vaccine in some cases of autism might cause autoimmunity and it might do so by bringing on an atypical measles infection that does not produce a typical measles rash but manifests neurological symptoms upon immunization.

Note: The MMR antibody has been previously reported to be the hemaggluttin protein of the vaccine measles virus (MV-HA). “Immunoblotting analysis showed the presence of an unusual MMR antibody in 60% (75 of 125) of autistic children, but none of the 92 normal children had this antibody. Moreover, by using MMR blots and monoclonal antibodies, we found that the specific increase of MV antibodies or “MMR” antibodies was related to measles hemagglutinin antigen (MV-HA)” (Singh, VK. Abnormal Measles Serology and Autoimmunity in Autistic Children, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 109, no. 1, page S232, Jan. 2002.) It is confirmed here (in an additional population) that this antibody is not typically produced during normal immune response to the vaccine.

MMR Update
Private Eye (NO URL)

A POTENTIALLY devastating rebuttal of the government's persistent claim that there is no possible link between the measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine and autism has emerged from a new study at Trinity College, Dublin. The study has found that the measles virus lodged in the intestines of 12 children with gut disease and autism has come from vaccination and not from exposure to wild or natural measles.

According to an abstract of the study, gut biopsies were taken from the intestines of 12 out of 75 autistic children who had already been found to have persistent measles virus. As a control the researchers used brain tissue from patients with SSPE, the rare degenerative brain disease associated with persistent measles infection. They confirmed vaccine strain measles in the guts of all 12 children, compared with wild measles in the control group.

"This pilot study further corroborates our previous findings of an association between the presence of measles virus and gut abnormalities in children with developmental disorder, and indicates the origins of the virus to be vaccine strain," say the researchers. Although they do not say how many of the 12 children had had MMR, it is known that 95 percent of the autistic children in the earlier tests had had the triple vaccine.

By now, the department of health might have been expected to have at least niggling doubts about claims that vaccine strain measles is 100 percent safe when it seems at the very least it is acting aberrantly in the guts of these children. Health chiefs and ministers might also have been expected to have adopted the "precautionary principle" they adhered to in other vaccine cases until the MMR question is properly answered. But no. Ever since gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield first raised doubts in 1998, the government and health chiefs have consistently refused to undertake meaningful research to answer the questions and have continually moved the goalposts.

Reacting to the latest Dublin study, a department of health spokesman said: "We look at all new research very carefully. The earlier work by this team was reviewed by experts including the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and there were no concerns." Before the Eye published its special report, MMR: The story so far, last month, we asked the department if it would take action were vaccine strain measles ever to be found in the guts of autistic children.

Then a spokesman said: "Demonstrating the presence in specific tissue would not prove causality. With no excess of autistic children with bowel problems post MMR [This is heavily disputed between experts. Ed] even a confirmed presence of measles vaccine virus could mean that autism or bowel disease causes it to be present, not that the virus causes these conditions."

MMRgy-bargy
Sir,
Private Eye Special Report - MMR We were saddened (although not entirely surprised), to read the news item about our review, for the British Medical Journal, of the Eye special report. The comment that our report was scathing "...but they would say that, wouldn't they" could be taken to imply that our critical comments were primarily a result of receiving reimbursement from vaccine manufacturers for attending educational meetings or conducting research. It is a pity that the Eye consider this to be an appropriate response, but then they would say that wouldn't they? While it is correct to say that we would be critical, it is because we have taken the time to look at ALL the scientific evidence on this issue, not just that provided by a select very vocal group. We would be the first to highlight any manipulation of the truth on the part of drug companies or the Department of Health and are very offended that it is implied that this is not the case.

We would like to point out that the Eye knows that the BMJ omitted to mention the above funding because we have been assiduous in declaring this in the past and it was only an oversight on the part of the BMJ that it did not happened on this occasion. Any funding we receive from vaccine manufacturers does not go into our own pockets. Indeed since we are aware that some people would consider receiving any such funds to be tantamount to being the mouthpiece of the manufacturers, we donate any payments other than funding for research, to charitable organisations. In this instance our fee from the BMJ was donated to the National Autistic Society. What, we wonder will the Eye make of that?

We look forward to reading a more considered review of your comments.
Yours sincerely,
HELEN BEDFORD,
Lecturer in Child Health, Institute of Child Health, London.
DAVID ELLIMAN,
Consultant in Community Child Health, St George's
Hospital, London.


11 July 2002

 MMR UPDATE

 Conflicting evidence and studies emerging on both sides of the Atlantic  on the MMR/autism controversy in the past few days have left parents  even more confused.  Last Wednesday Dr Arthur Krigsman, a pediatric gastroenterologist from  the New York University School of Medicine, told a US congressional  committee on autism that he had found an identical pattern of inflammatory bowel disease in 90 per cent of his 43 young autistic  patients, to that reported by Dr Andrew Wakefield four years ago when he first raised questions over MMR.

 As the Eye reported in its special report MMR: The Story So Far,  Krigsman's work is one of a handful of small clinical studies which  gives the lie to government claims that Wakefield's work has not been  replicated. It is understood that Krigsman is now going to look for  measles virus in his patients' guts.

 The committee also heard that measles virus had been found in the  spinal fluid of two autistic children. This means it would have direct  access to the brain. Dr Jeff Bradstreet, medical director of the  International Child Development Resource Centre, told the committee  that spinal taps on his own autistic child and another had revealed  measles virus; and that research work was now underway with other  autistic children and normal control children to explore the  significance of the discovery.

 Dr Wakefield, the London gastroenterologist who first sounded alarm  bells about the MMR vaccine, told the same hearing that preliminary  studies had shown that 25 autistic children who had had a second dose  of MMR, compared to those who had received only one, had suffered a  worsening of their physical and behavioural symptoms, suggesting  evidence of a link between their condition and the jab.

 He said research by his group and collaborators and other small pockets  of researchers in the US had now found that children with regressive  autism had a novel form of inflammatory bowel disease not found in  normal children and consistent with a viral cause; that the measles  virus had been found in the diseased intestine where it would be  expected if it were the cause; that the measles virus had been found in  only a small minority of developmentally normal children; and,  referring to the latest study from Prof John O'Leary's team from  Trinity College, Dublin, that in 12 autistic children it had been identified as vaccine strain.

 Meanwhile, in the UK, a study billed as ''the most in-depth analysis of  the scientific literature to date'' published in Clinical Evidence  concluded that ''there is no evidence that MMR or single measles  vaccines are associated with autism or inflammatory bowel disease''.  The work was yet another review of the same body of work which others  have trawled over before and it would be surprising if it had come up  with any other conclusion. The trouble is, as a similar review carried out by the American Institute of Medicine (IOM) acknowledged, ''the  epidemiological evidence lacks the precision to assess rare occurances  of a response to MMR leading to autism''. The IOM called for more research comparing MMR-vaccinated children with non-vaccinated children and investigating whether vaccine strain measles was present in autistic children.

 The UK review not only had no new research work, but it excluded the whole body of research that Wakefield was referring to - about 20 papers in total - includng that which revealed the vaccine strain virus. Independent researchers from Bazian, a company promoting evidence-based health care, who carried out the review, said they followed strict research criteria and ruled out all small clinical studies which were open to bias. But it is the small clinical studies, which are actually looking at what is happening to these children, that are causing alarm.

 One such study is that of Prof O'Leary. Though he himself declared last  week that he still advocated immunisation and his new work showing the presence of vaccine strain measles virus in the guts of autistic  children does not prove any link between MMR and autism, his work does raise serious questions.

 What is the virus doing in the guts of these children? Is it causing  the damage or is it there because autism and bowel disease mean the children can't clear it from their systems? Could it be elsewhere in their bodies?

 News from the US that the virus has also been found in the spinal fluid - albeit only in two children - has alarmed parents even more. Julie Loch, a pharmacist whose son Oliver is severely autistic said, ''Many like my son are awaiting MRI scans due to further increasing and alarming neurological problems. The measles virus has now been found in cerebro spinal fluid in others, suggesting its presence in the brain. Are our children sitting time bombs, that will at some point develop the fatal brain condition SSPE?''

 Instead of relying on reviews of old research and studies, the case for new research to answer these questions one way or another is overwhelming. Why won't the government embark on it?
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/22-7-19102-0-10-43.html


Scots Study On Autism Poses New Question of MMR Link

[By Vicky Collins.]
http://click.topica.com/maaarZuaaSSXba4JiD8b/

A scientist in Scotland yesterday revealed new research which could indicate a link between autism and the MMR vaccine by showing that autistic children have abnormally high levels of toxins in their bodies. The study by Gordon Bell, of Stirling University, also raises hopes that autism may not be genetic and instead be a physical, and therefore potentially treatable, condition. Lead, aluminium and antimony (similar to arsenic but more toxic) were found to be present in children suffering from autism at a significantly higher level than other children.
All three toxins weaken the immune system and, when present in high levels, Dr Bell believes they could affect the body's response to the MMR jab. He suggests the immune system could be too weak to react properly to the triple vaccine, triggering the onset of autism. "These toxins could increase the likelihood of a reaction to viral change because they are all immune suppressants," he said. "Autism is all about putting too much of a burden on the body, and high levels of heavy metals may lead to other catastrophic events in the body which may then lead to autism. "All these metals or elements are at toxic levels so the body may not react appropriately to a immune change such as that caused by the MMR vaccine."

Dr Bell, whose own son developed autism at the age of two after having the MMR jab, believes children susceptible to autism may have a problem getting rid of toxins from their bodies. He called for more research, both to test his results and establish whether it was possible to develop a treatment for the problem. "This is just a small-scale study, but it is very relevant. I simply do not have the resources to do the large-scale studies that are needed," he said.

"I am saying: look at this, it is a real result, and if it is the reality in a majority, or even a significant minority, of people with autism then it is something we should be looking into." Action Against Autism said the research undermined the traditional model of the disease as "psychiatric, genetic, lifelong, and incurable". Bill Welsh, chairman, called for a large-scale study. "Clinical examination of autistic children should now be a priority. Dr Bell's findings further confirm that these unfortunate children are just plain sick and probably in distress." David Potter, head of policy at the National Autistic Society, confirmed the toxins found by Dr Bell had never previously been detected. "The medical establishment see this as a gen-etic condition, but this type of research shows there are other factors involved. We would be very keen to
see this type of research furthered."

Dr Bell, a lecturer in marine biology at Stirling, has a PhD in biochemistry and became heavily involved in autism research since it affected his own family six years ago. He is a member of the Scottish Executive's cross-party group on the condition. With funds provided by the Autism Research Trust, Dr Bell tested 37 children for toxic elements, taking hair samples which were then sent to a laboratory in America for analysis. Levels of antimony in autistic children were five times above the normal maximum range and levels of lead and aluminium were three times higher. Antimony can cause fatigue, hypotension, angina, and immune dysfunction.

All 24 children with autism who took part in the study were found to have antimony present above the recommended maximum values, compared to 50% of the eight non-autistic children tested, and 40% of the five children with Asperger's Syndrome. Lead, an excess of which can lead to severe gastro-intestinal problems, loss of appetite, insomnia, and nervousness, was present above the normal maximum range in 92% of autistic children, compared to only 25% of non-autistic children, and 20% with Asperger's Syndrome. High levels of aluminium, which have been implicated in the onset of dementia, were present in 54% of autistic children, compared to only 12.5% of the control group, and none in the Asperger's group.

http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/opinion/Full_Story/did-sgSd9bGREwpTA.asp
Irish Examiner

26/07/02
Experts differ while children continue to suffer autism

OVER the past couple of years, we have seen medical authorities and medical correspondents reaching a not guilty verdict on the MMR causing autism. They justify this on the basis of scientific evidence. Maybe it’s time the public understood this term. Scientific evidence is 100% evidence. Does the public realise that, by this definition, we cannot be sure that smoking causes lung cancer?

Maybe it’s time to note that there are other types of evidence:

First, there is laboratory evidence. For example, there’s the fact that our leading cell pathologist has discovered that a virus is causing a new type of ulceration in the bowels of children that regressed into autism, that the offending virus is a measles virus and that the sequenced DNA of this virus is that of the vaccine strain of measles, not wild measles.There is clinical evidence, that of physicians treating these children. Physicians who, because they recognise and treat the viral, heavy metal, and fungal overloads experienced by these children, are successfully improving these childrens’ lives.

Then there is anecdotal evidence. For example, on the Hope Project Helpline, we have heard hundreds of autism onset stories from parents and the vast majority of these implicate the MMR and others the DPT vaccine in autism. Lastly, there is the eyewitness evidence of frightened parents who have watched their beautiful children slip away into the quagmire of autism within weeks of the MMR.

It is a sad fact that the only evidence that seems acceptable in this debate (can you call something as lopsided as the MMR controversy in Ireland a debate?) is 100% scientific evidence. Hard and damning laboratory evidence seems to be ignored, clinical evidence is excused, anecdotal evidence ridiculed as scare-mongering and parental eyewitness evidence cannot be accepted by our guardians of drug safety, the Irish Medicines Board. So what will happen? For the time being, susceptible children and teenagers will continue to develop Autistic Spectrum disorders, bowel disease, eating disorders and bipolar, to name but a few, in ever increasing numbers.

Eventually, the decision will be taken out of the hands of our medical guardians and Minister for Health and Children. A High Court judge will listen to all the types of evidence and he or she will make a legal decision on the balance of probability, 51% that the MMR caused the plaintiff to become autistic. Following a number of these decisions, a tribunal will be held and we will finally be able to understand how medical authority, money and politics allowed thousands of Irish children to be sacrificed to the requirements of 100% “scientific evidence”.

Kathy Sinnott,
Hope Project Secretary,
St Josephs,
Ballinhassig,
Co Cork.

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200
wales/page.cfm?objectid=12172694
&method=full&siteid=50082

News Mum claims new MMR autism link Sep 5 2002

Madeleine Brindley Health Correspondent
Madeleine.Brindley@Wme.Co.Uk,
The Western Mail

FRESH evidence emerged last night to suggest that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism.

The parents of Welsh schoolboy Oliver Loch have discovered that his blood and digestive organs are infected with the same strain of measles used in the triple vaccine. And they fear his condition will get worse if the disease has spread to his brain. Oliver, six, was diagnosed with autism and a severe bowel disorder when he was two, soon after having the MMR jab to protect him against measles, mumps and rubella. Last night his mother Julie, who lives near Newport, said she believed there was no other way he could have been infected by measles except through the jab he was given as a toddler.

"We more or less knew this was the case because to my knowledge Oliver has never been exposed to this strain of measles except through the vaccine," said Mrs Loch. The discovery of the virus consistent with a strain of measles used in the MMR vaccine was made after specialist tests. Now Oliver's condition is certain to cause concern among other parents being asked to give their children the triple jab. Mrs Loch has always maintained that her son's illness was caused by an adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine, possibly as a result of a compromised immune system.

"Over the past three years or so I have been in correspondence with countless medics and politicians who have refused to accept that my son may be vaccine-damaged," she said. "It is accepted that something happened during his second year of life that irreversibly damaged both his brain and bowel, but not one person has been able to offer an alternative explanation, despite my persistence." Mrs Loch and her husband Peter now face the agonising decision of putting Oliver through more tests to determine whether the strain of measles has also infected his brain.

His condition is deteriorating and he is experiencing other neurological problems, including epilepsy. Mrs Loch said, "Time is ticking away and we're getting scared for Oliver. If measles is in his brain it could be doing untold damage." The results of the tests will be used in a forthcoming High Court case against MMR manufacturers Glaxo-SmithKline, Aventis Pasteur MSD and Merck & Co, in which the Loch family is involved.

The discovery of measles in Oliver's body also appears to lend evidence to a link between MMR, autism and bowel disease that was first raised by Dr Andrew Wakefield in 1998 and has been blamed for the slump in the number of children being given the MMR jab. Mrs Loch said, "I'm not anti-vaccines - I believe it is safe for the majority - but clearly there is a substantial group of children who have experienced adverse effects and research now needs to be done to find out why they reacted to the vaccine and what can be done to help them."

Worried parents in Britain are already paying for single-vaccine jabs privately or allowing their children to run the risk of catching the diseases rather than allow them to be given MMR on the NHS. They are increasingly turning their backs on MMR despite doctors' warnings that Wales is heading for a potentially lethal out-break of measles. Health officials have set a 95pc target rate for the take-up of MMR to ensure that an outbreak cannot happen but the average take-up in Wales has fallen to 82.5pc. In some areas a quarter of children go unprotected.

The chairman of the British Medical Association's Welsh GP committee, Dr Andrew Dearden, said a measles outbreak in Wales was almost inevitable. "If the number of vaccinated babies drops below 80pc measles can escape into the community and epidemics break out," he said. Last night the Government said its advice on MMR was that it was safe and there was no proven link between the vaccine and autism. Its advice to parents was unchanged: they should allow their children to have the jab.


Department of Immunology, WHO Collaborative Center for Measles, Laboratoire National de Sante, P.O. Box 1102, L-1011, Luxembourg. claude.muller@santel.lu

Life attenuated measles vaccines have dramatically reduced measles morbidity and mortality world-wide. Despite high vaccination coverage, measles outbreaks continue to occur both in developed and developing countries. While secondary vaccine failure may be responsible for disease in some seroconverted individuals, evidence suggests that many more vaccinees who are protected against disease may not be fully protected against virus infection. In low-income developing countries protection by maternal antibodies seems to erode faster than previously estimated especially in infants who were born to vaccinated mothers. Problems of infectivity and susceptibility of vaccinees will be compounded in case wild-type viruses become less sensitive to vaccine induced immunity. These observations suggest that elimination may be more easily achieved as long as large proportions of populations are protected by wild-type virus-induced immunity.

PMID: 11257344 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Autism, An Extreme Challenge To Integrative Medicine
Part: 1: The knowledge base.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=
Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui
ds=12197782&dopt=Abstract Kidd PM.

Parris Kidd, PhD (Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley) -Contributing Editor, Alternative Medicine Review; Health educator and biomedical consultant to the supplement industry.
Correspondence address: 847 Elm Street, El Cerrito, CA 94530.

Autism, archetype of the autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by socially aloof behavior and impairment of language and social interaction. Its prevalence has surged in recent years Advanced functional brain imaging has confirmed pervasive neurologic involvement. Parent involvement in autism management has accelerated understanding and treatment. Often accompanied by epilepsy, cognitive deficits, or other neurologic impairment, autism manifests in the first three years of life and persists into adulthood.

Its etiopathology is poorly defined but likely multifactorial with heritability playing a major role. Prenatal toxic exposures (teratogens) are consistent with autism spectrum symptomatology. Frequent vaccinations with live virus and toxic mercurial content (thimerosal) are a plausible etiologic factor. Autistic children frequently have abnormalities of sulfoxidation and sulfation that compromise liver detoxification, which may contribute to the high body burden of xenobiotics frequently found. Frequent copper-zinc imbalance implies metallothionein impairment that could compound the negative impact of sulfur metabolism impairments on detoxification and on intestinal lining integrity. Intestinal hyperpermeability manifests in autistic children as dysbiosis, food intolerances, and exorphin (opioid) intoxication, most frequently from casein and gluten. Immune system abnormalities encompass derangement of antibody production, skewing of T cell subsets, aberrant cytokine profiles, and other impairments consistent with chronic inflammation and autoimmunity. Coagulation abnormalities have been reported.  Part 2 of this review will attempt to consolidate progress in integrative management of autism, aimed at improving independence and lifespan for people with the disorder.
PMID: 12197782 [PubMed - in process]


http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/329/7466/588-b#74117
Re: The effects of toxic metals in autistic children 13 September 2004

Dr Ellen C G Grant,
physician and medical gynaecologist
20 Coombe Ridings, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, KT2 7JU, UK,
Dr John McLaren-Howard, Laboratory Director, Biolab Medical Unit, 9
Weymouth Street, London W1W 6DB, UK
Send response to journal:
Re: Re: The effects of toxic metals in autistic children

Email Dr Ellen C G Grant, et al.

John Stone is concerned that expensive epidemiological investigations may mislead by failing to investigate the biochemistry of either "healthy" or autistic children.

Our studies in 1981 and 1989 found significantly higher concentrations of copper and cadmium in hair in dyslexic children compared with matched controls.1,2 Sweat zinc was severely deficient in the dyslexic children,
being 66% lower than that for control children. However, the control children in 1989 had much lower average zinc level than the children tested for laboratory reference range purposes 10 years before in 1979.2,3 Zinc
deficiency allows accumulation of toxic metals which may be important causes of the increase in autism, asthma, dyslexia and hyperactivity in the past few decades.4,5

Biolab Medical Unit offers analyses of all toxic metal levels in blood, metal sensitivity tests and the effects of toxic metal substitution on proteins and some binding sites.6,7 Dr John McLaren- Howard presented the
results of testing 61 autistic children at a Biolab Workshop for Doctors in June 2004, as he was attempting to find out which nutritional tests should be recommended. Among the 42 boys and 19 girls most were deficient in zinc and magnesium. Many were also deficient in copper, chromium, manganese, molybdenum and B vitamins. Therefore, essential fatty acids were also likely to be deficient. 16 children had DNA-adducts in leucocytes to
malondialdehyde, 12 to cadmium, 9 to nickel. Three of the 61 children had DNA-adducts to mercury and one had DNA- adducts to lead. 37 children had antigliadin IgG antibodies, while 30 children had malabsorption detected by a D-xylose test. Malabsorption was most common in those with Asperger's type syndrome, 16 out of 18 children.

The zinc and magnesium lowering effects of maternal use of progesterones and oestrogens, parental smoking and alcohol use and parental dental mercury and other dental metal levels like nickel and tin, need to be
looked at in larger studies. Mercury is a toxic metal whether it is in dental amalgams or in vaccines. If 5% of autistic children show evidence of signs of mercury exposures, this still means large numbers of children have
been adversely affected. Clearly the increasing incidence of childhood diseases needs proper biochemical scientific investigations.

1 Capel ID, Pinnock MH, Dorrell HM, Williams DC, Grant ECG. Comparison of
concentrations of some trace, bulk and toxic metals in the hair of normal
and dyslexic children. Clinical chemistry 1981; 27: 879-81

2 Grant ECG, Howard JM ,Davies S, Chasty H, Hornsby B, Galbraith J. Zinc
deficiency in children with dyslexia: concentrations of zinc and other
minerals in sweat and hair. BMJ 1989;296:607-9.

3 Howard JM. Serum, leucocyte, sweat and hair zinc levels – a correlation
study. J Nutr Environ Med 1990; 1:119-126.

4 Grant ECG. Autism, epidemiology and toxic metals
http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/327/7428/1411#43876, 17 Dec 2003

5 Grant ECG. Zinc and essential fatty acids in asthma
http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7464/489#72650, 31 Aug 2004

6 McLaren Howard J. The Detection of DNA Adducts (Risk Factors for DNA
Damage). A Method for Genomic DNA, the Results and Some Effects of
Nutritional