Guess what, it seems that the MMR triple jab is safe after all. Quel surpriseMinisters call for inquiry into 'flawed' MMR study
So many aspects of this would have made me laugh if it hadn't been so potentially tragic. Those stupid campaigners who shouted their mouths off lacking the basic intelligence to understand that if they were concerned about the effects of the jab on their child, if they kept quiet, their child would probably be kept relatively safe through herd immunity. Instead, their ignorant hysteria destroyed herd immunity.
The Evening Standard did a vox pop at one of the Beacon Primary schools in my ward. The working class parent from the council estate declared it essential to have her children vaccinated against what were potentially deadly diseases, the middle class parent from the residental street decided that when her son had measles she would treat him with an aromatherapy candle and not bother keeping him off school. A nursery round our way hit the headlines for having a large number of measles cases. One of the first was the son of my acquaintances. He had not been able to have the triple jab because of a heavy cold on the scheduled date and they were shocked that he had got measles, assuming, like many of us, it had been virtually wiped out.
My mother and her generation have vivid memories of the terrible damage caused by measles epidemics - brain damage and death. Someone I know was a victim of the scare over whooping cough vaccine and has damaged eyesight as a result.
On Have Your Say there's an interesting selection of views - I particularly liked Pete from London:
Dave is right. MMR has split the medical profession. It has split it into one very large part and a tiny splinter who insist there's problem. The latter simply won't give up and like to present the split as being down the middle. They make a lot of noise but have very, very little backing from elsewhere.
I remember being shouted off the dreadful Radio London by the diddy-hitler Jon Gaunt for being patronising to the working classes for suggesting that the follow through rates for the single jab are unacceptably low. He was too keen to hear his own voice and blame 'Them' to listen to the fact that a study in a prosperous area of Cheshire showed extremely low completion of the single jab course. It's a real problem in my area, because the interesting juxtaposition of high numbers of a)appallingly apathetic inadequate parents; b)recent immigrants who may not understand English and probably not the NHS; c) new agey middle-class anx ridden types with an innate inability to analyse facts. 60% take up and a measles epidemic timebomb.
