http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldn...m_link.php

Parents rally in support of doctor facing misconduct charge over MMR-autism link
By Judith Duffy, Health Correspondent
Wakefield’s GMC hearing scheduled for next month
Comment | Read Comments (80)
PARENTS OF autistic children are planning a demonstration in support of the doctor at the centre of the MMR controversy, when he is summoned for a disciplinary hearing next month.

The Sunday Herald has learned that Dr Andrew Wakefield - who first suggested a link between the triple jab for mumps, measles and rubella, and autism and bowel disease - is due to appear before the General Medical Council (GMC) on July 16.

His research, published in 1998, led to widespread public fears about the safety of the vaccine and triggered a decline in MMR immunisation levels across the UK. Prime minister Tony Blair was even drawn into the row after consistently refusing to reveal whether his son Leo, now seven, received the jab.

advertisementWakefield, who is now working in America, has faced widespread criticisms over the claims, with subsequent studies failing to confirm the link. In late 2004, the GMC launched an inquiry into allegations of serious professional misconduct against him and two former colleagues.

But parents who believe their children's autism has been triggered by the vaccine are planning to show their support for the doctor outside next month's disciplinary hearing in London.

In addition, an online petition to demand the government and health organisations "stop investigating the doctors and start investigating the patients" has collected more than 4000 signatures.

Campaigner Bill Welsh, president of the Edinburgh-based Autism Treatment Trust, claimed Wakefield was the victim of a "medical establishment witch-hunt".

"Dr Wakefield listened to the parents about their children's disease, clinically investigated the children and reported what he found - where is the crime in that?" he said. "This trial undermines the possibility of any future independent scientific research that might challenge establishment policy."

The petition, started by campaigner Nigel Thomas - who has two brothers diagnosed with autism - states: "I have seen first-hand their decline, seen them screaming in pain and I have seen how all but a handful of doctors repeatedly refused to investigate their problems, brushing off the family's concerns and leaving us helpless, like thousands of other families around the world.

"The only doctors who were prepared to help are now on trial whilst the children are denied basic investigations."

A spokesman for the GMC told the Sunday Herald that there would be a hearing involving Wakefield "in the near future", but insisted he could not confirm the date. He added that the exact charges which were being brought against the doctor would only be revealed at the start of the hearing.

Health officials have consistently maintained that MMR is safe and latest figures show that confidence in the jab is returning. However, vaccination rates across Scotland are still around 3% below the 95% target.

A government spokeswoman said MMR was the safest, most effective way of protecting children.

"The uptake of the MMR vaccination remains at a higher level than in recent times, but we will continue to monitor the level of immunisation," she added.

But many parents still harbour doubts. A Sunday Herald investigation last year revealed that thousands of children in Scotland have received single jabs for measles, mumps and rubella in recent years, with parents paying hundreds of pounds at private clinics because they are not available on the NHS.

Louise Tollin, from East Kilbride, thinks MMR led to her child being diagnosed with autism in 2004. She said four-year-old Christopher showed no signs of problems until he received the vaccine, when he "began to regress before her eyes".

"Christopher was born normal, I am 100% sure about that," she said. "He got the MMR at the beginning of June and by the end of the month he had stopped responding to his name."

She added: "I think the government knows exactly what is going on and it is all being swept under the carpet."


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Oh here we go, the mercury militia at work again!

Anyone in the UK up for a counter protest? Wakefield's a quack and the sooner he is stripped of his registration in the UK the better. The Autism Omnibus case completely wrecked him and his mates and the sooner he is dealt with the better.

And the parents in the protest should be given high colonics and sent on ten mile hikes! Talk about paranoia and cult like behaviour! It's in all the scientific books - MMR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ASD'S!!!

Just for the record, I did not post the article because I agree with Wakefields supporters. I just found it newsworthy enough to post.

I don't know about the rest of you but I'm not screaming in pain.

I never said you posted it for any other reason, Theoseph. Thanks for it!

Actually, the MMR never had mercury, it would have killed the live viruses. I have great concerns over the use of combined live virus vaccines.

My daughter, who yes, was autistic from birth, had the MMR and varicella vaccines at 17 months. 3 weeks later, she developed a high fever, seizures, and odd bulls-eye rash. No tests were done at the ER other than to rule out strep throat.

Within 2 weeks of this event, she became completely disconnected, and started suffering more severe GI problems than ever. She had always had issues with dairy, and such, but after this event, she was pooping about 10x per day, horrible, watery bowels that had undigested food. She was soon screaming for hours a day in pain, from her gastric problems.

Her doctor had also noted that she stopped growing, and was losing weight.

An MRI revealed that she has pituitary damage, that is most likely caused by an infection of the brain.

After many lab tests, we soon learned that she has a Primary Immune Deficiency. We were also told by her immunologist that she should never have had live virus vaccines.

If one does not have a "typical" immune response, a live virus vaccine can replicate and cause the illness it was meant to prevent in the patient. That is why we no longer use a live polio vaccine, as it was crippling immune deficient children.

All of her doctors agree that she likely suffered encephalitis, most likely from the one of the vaccines.

Did it make her autistic, not hardly, but it did cause a regression, or "manifestation of symptoms". I think due to the fact that autism is hard to detect prior to this immunization, and parents see a sudden change after this vaccine, they assume the vaccine caused the autism. It may worsen the symptoms, but not cause it.

I truly feel this event worsened her autism. The good news is that since we have begun to treat her immune deficiency, her GI function has been restored, and she is much more alert, and no longer in pain. She can also read, and type over 300 words at 3!

Unfortunately, many with autism suffer from immune dysfunction and deficiency. This is a genetic condition, as is autism.

Until we have scientific proof about the MMR, which we do not, we really need to take a closer look at what damage it can do.

Unfortunately, the only studies discrediting the link, have been epidemiologic. The same type of science that convinced the world that tobacco smoking DID not cause lung cancer, until scientific studies proved otherwise. Even the Cochrane report (which refutes the link) says that the studies to date are largely inadequate, but the benefits of vaccination far exceed any risk involved.

A simple solution would be to administer each virus seprately, as combined live virus vaccines contain more of each virus than if seperate, to compensate for viral interference.

Ironically, my daughter is not immune to ANY of the vaccine preventable diseases she was vaccinated against, as her immune system could not mount an adequate response. The last thing I would want is vaccine uptake to drop, this would be catastrophic, especially for children like my daughter.

Well, the mercury militia are claiming the MMR vaccine in their arguments, Monica. My view is that the regression was caused by the high fever (perfect sensory overload) and not the vaccine. Now if it can be proved that the vaccine caused the high fever, then OK, but there are treatments for high fever. That was a key to the test case in the US Vaccine Court last month - a fever of 105 F. I have asked ever since I heard that "Why didn't they take the kid to hospital??". Such a high fever in a baby is nothing to be trifled with! I wouldn't trifle with it in any human being including adults - but a BABY??? Yike!

I understand it is the fever, and any disease can cause fever, and the problem Jade had. Unfortunately, in the US's crappy healthcare system, even a fever of 105 isn't enough to warrant action anymore.

We took Jade to a walk in pediatric urgent care center. They said it was viral, of unknown origin (after ruling out strep). The dr said to go home, and use motrin/ tylenol.

When we left there, and in the car she had a seizure. We took her straight to the ER. We waited 4 hrs before seeing a doctor. By then, her fever was down (we were using tylenol in the waiting room), and they doubted me when I said she had a seizure, they said she was just crying really hard (which she wasn't making a sound).

She was stiff, arching her back, and would scream if touched this entire day. She also had the strangest rash I had ever seen, I wish I had photographed it. It was called erythema multiforme. This is what it looks like (sorry, the best representation I could find happens to be on an ***) http://elc.skh.org.tw/elc/uploads/photos/2.jpg

Atleast that is the closest pic I could find to what Jade had, and she had only about 20 spots. I don't think she had a bad case, and I think that is why she isn't that severe (even though 2 docs dx'd her as that).

Anyway, why they didn't take their baby (the test case), I will never know, I have seen the pictures, and that child had erythema multiforme, too, much worse than Jade's. I took Jade as soon as she awoke with the rash and fever.

And while true that it is the fever that caused the regression, in many cases, the fever would not have happenned, if not for a vaccine reaction.

I may never know if it was some rogue virus that affected Jade (yet no other child in her daycare with over 50 children), or the vaccine. It was just 3 weeks after the vaccine.

The only way I will know the truth, is to have Jade's csf tested. Honestly, it's not worth it. She has been a pincushion enough with her pituitary problems, and immune deficiency. Besides, I doubt it would help anything. I have studied many of the vaccine court cases (only 20% of the claims are awarded), even based on it causing pituitary damage, we would be looking at years of battling, for a  possibility of a few hundred thousand. No thanks, I would rather my family live without the stress.

I am very interested in what you mean by "perfect sensory overload", as I have wondered about my husband's friend's nephew. His family is very "spectrumish" and when his nephew was 2, he pulled a pot of boiling water on himself, had severe burns, regressed, and is severely autistic.

I have heard other similar stories, and was wondering if you think it may be due to a sensory overload, too much of a certain stimuli perhaps?

Well that's part of the problem, and it needs to be fixed up pronto.

Well that's something that would need to be looked at at the time, otherwise one will never know.

Well, I'm basing my view on an opinion that was put by a doctor on a blog earlier this year - but basically as I understand it any severe attack on any of the five senses, or even the sixth (instinct) would be perfect. Pain is another great one (a la the boiling water) but a high fever just completely disorientates you. I'm probably not making myself clear here because as I said - I'm going on a theory as presented elsewhere.

But yes - too much of a certain stimuli. But it could be any stimuli.

I just returned from our aspie support group last night. We have a new older aspie.  The guy went on and on about Mercury. I have had it with these alarmists.. Put the doctor in jail. I will lock the door myself.  I Do believe many aspies have varying degrees of ODD.
Aspergers is genetic.... Public health and vaccines are important.

Its about Genes not Vaccines

My family's autism goes back to 1860 in the backwood Wallachian mountains.. my grand parents live on a ranch in Tx. They did not have vaccines nor thermometers...  My mother and I and my cousins and aunts never had the vaccines.. we have aspergers.  My daughter has had all her vaccines... she is NT but carries my genes.

Instead of blaming things.. take the time to work with ones child and help them adapt. That is  more constructive.  

I have never had employment problems. In fact people are shocked to find out I have aspergers... I learned to survive. I thank God in a way I did not know.. I would hate to think my mother would waste time and my time with torches and pitch forks blaming a gene that has been in our family forever!  My mom had it.. we survived..we had jobs.. we got along with people as best we could..

The only reason I am responding to this thread is because all this hysteria is beginning to be pushed in my life and mostly by very uneducated people following quacks.  I think the time has come to start sueing people who are spreading false information and causing hysteria.. it will only hurt aspies in the long run

Which I agree is a serious concern, but I don't know about this case... I don't know how he collected his data and how/where he reported the results. The appropriate way to have done this is to have made a database of his patients, noting the onset of autism and when they were vaccinated, and reported the conclusions in a scientific journal. Then other researchers could have done some studies to either confirm or reject the hypothesis, without the public ever having to worry about some unproven hypothesis. Perhaps doctors need more scientific and ethicial training in medical school... Anybody can come up with unproven hypotheses and with some case studies that might indicate that they're right and scare the hell out of the public, especially if they have some letters behind their name and claim to have researched it.

Could you give any links for that? It's my understanding that smokers have several times the risk of nonsmokers, which is something that one would expect to show up in epidemiological studies. Btw, epidemiological studies ARE scientific studies... of course, the only type of study that can PROVE that smoking causes cancer is unethical to do and hence won't be done (you can't do a double-blind study on people, forcing one group of randomly selected people to smoke cigarettes and another randomly selected group to not smoke cigarettes and then see whether the incidence of cancer varies). But my understanding is that the epidemiological evidence is strong, and studies in rats and monkeys and such show that it causes lung cancer, so that that combination makes it extremely likely that smoking causes lung cancer in humans.

Is that more common among people with ASDs? ('many' doesn't necessarily mean "more than average"). I've got pretty bad allergies and I used to be ill a lot, although I think the latter was mostly caused by me hating school.

Administering the vaccines separately may or may not be a solution. For some immunodeficient kids it might make just enough of a difference, but for others (most?) the difference would not be large enough. Nobody claims that vaccines are safe for everyone... and afaik it can't be determined in advance which kids are going to be the unlucky ones.

FWIW I had the mumps when I was 3 months old and handled it just fine... never had any side effects from vaccines either, afaik, other than with the rabies vaccine series when I was 17yo, and that was fairly minor, just frothing at the mouth and lots of sweating and such, and a little bit of confusion. Damn vaccine is only good for 2 years at that btw and also really expensive... I got it at the same time as the DTP and the Hep AB vaccines (and perhaps some other vaccine... I don't remember). They say that almost everyone gets those side effects though, whether combined with other vaccines or not.

Oh, and just a week after I got my last rabies vaccination I got an A average on my highschool finals... I think we've got a case study here... rabies vaccines cause good grades... vaccinate your highschool seniors now! </sarcasm>

Marieke Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! I have to remember that one!  Thanks!

We had a guy at our support group going on and on and on about mercury.. its getting so old.