THE DEADLY LINK BETWEEN

MMR Vaccine and Autism

Our readers will recall the book, The Vaccination Crisis, written by the present author (116 pp., $5.95 + $2.50). In the course of researching out the harrowing details of what can happen when children (especially small children) are vaccinated, the author was especially impressed with the dangers inherent in rubella vaccine, which is a standard part of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) combination vaccine.

A 1998 research study, published in the British medical journal, Lancet, reveals that the MMR vaccine could be a cause of that terrible condition, known as autism.

Autism usually develops before the age of 30 months, when the sufferers lose their intellectual and higher brain functions. The children become withdrawn, self-absorbed, and unable to communicate.

Dr. Andy Wakefield (a specialist in gastroenterology) and Dr. John Walker-Smith led a research team at the Royal Free Hospital and school of Medicine in London, which discovered a new bowel disease in children which could be linked to autism and the MMR vaccination. They discovered that most of the children developed the bowel disease after the vaccination. This disclosure has aroused new fears about the safety of vaccines.

All twelve children had developed normally; but then suddenly lost skills, such as language, and developed a strange bowel problem.

Wakefield and Walker-Smith also studied 40 other patients, 39 of whom also had the same combination of intestinal and behavioral symptoms.

Wakefield said, "We were very, very surprised. We expected we might see one or two in the second group." Seven hundred more children are on the list at the Royal Free Hospital, to be assessed for the new bowel/autism syndrome. But we are not able to locate any report on that extended study.

The new bowel disease was given the name, "ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyerplasia." With a name like that, you surely will not forget it soon.

The vaccine industry is big business; for, each year, it brings millions of dollars, from sales to physicians and health departments around the world, into drug company coffers.

Rather quickly, medical authorities in the U.S. complained that the study was flawed, incomplete, etc. Robert Chen and Frank DeStefano, of the Vaccine Safety and Development Activity National Immunization Program (an even bigger name!) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (CDC), said the research was not proof that MMR vaccine causes the bowel syndrome or autism.

In their rebuff in Lancet, Chen and DeStefano made the significant comment that autism first becomes noticeable at two years of age, and that happens to be when the MMR vaccine is usually given. "Not surprisingly, therefore, some cases will follow MMR vaccination," they said.

But that reasoning could support a causal relationship rather than a coincidental one: Autism is first noticed at the age of two, because the MMR vaccine was given at that time.

Pasteur Merieux MSD, a French firm which makes the vaccine used in Britain, issued this statement: "It would be unfortunate if the results of controversial studies such as these resulted in a drop in public confidence in the vaccine, which the vast majority of the informed medical profession support totally,"

Over the past 15 years, the number of routine shots has risen from five to 20 for children up to 2 years old, says Margaret Rennels, a pediatrics professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

In a survey of 1,600 parents of young children last fall in the journal, Pediatrics, 25% worried that the sheer number of vaccines could overwhelm and weaken their childs immune system.

Parents whose children have been paralyzed or killed by vaccinations have banded together. This may be the current address: Dissatisfied Parents Together (DPT), 128 Branch Road, Vienna, Virginia 22180 / 703-938-DPT3. (DPT is the abbreviation for a vaccine.)vf