With four children and a chiropractic clinic to run, I did not realise how hard it would be to keep up a blog. Prompted by the hysterias which always surrounds Andrew Wakfield and particularly this week as he appears before the GMC, I will try again. When we say we have not vaccinated our children people always assume we mean MMR. Readers of the site may also be of the view  that Wakfield inmy opinion has always been a diversion from the real issue vaccination policy in general especially the DPT vaccine with thimersol (mercury) in it which was withdrawn two years ago after questions were being raised particularly after the death of the late Sally Clark’s son Harry.

This week we have all this self righteous journalists telling the public, it’s the media who is at fault for creating all the hysteria around MMR. Nick Cohen in the Evening Standard July 18 tells us most journalists “don’t understand science” while at the same time telling us implying MMR is perfectly safe. Ben Goldacre on the same day accuses the media of being the real villains of the MMR story ignoring the fact is just shooting the messenger in a very polarized debate.  We all want to do what is best for our children and few will consider the possibility they may have been wrong. If I was to see one credibile study that vaccinated children were healthier of course we would vaccinate the children.

 Consider the article by medical student Alex Thomas in Mondays Society Guardian (Full text in Forum) “The best way to protect children and avoid scaremongering over MMR is to make vaccines compulsory”.

Then she tries to scare the life out of expectant mums by telling them about the film she saw of babies with whooping cough (pertussis) gasping for their last breath. How their  “newborn babies” will almost certainly get sick and perhaps die because of the stupidity of parents like myself. Then describing little Thomas who got pertussis at eight months “on a ventilator” “tubes down his throat” “Intravenous lines going into her limbs”

In her enthusiasm for compulsory vaccination Alex has not considered that Thomas would have had his pertusis and it failed to provide the protection “guaranteed” on the box. Therfore the blame must lie with parents who don’t vaccinate,who do their best to ensure their children have strong immune systems. Thye most likely explanation for Thoma’s struggle was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) 2006. Forty four percent of children with persistant cough had serological evidence of  pertussis  infection and 85.9% of these children had been fully immunised. The vaccine is not as effective as thought and GPs believe in the vaccine to such an extent they are failing to diagnose occurrences of pertussis in  immunized children and focus on a very small group who experience complications to promote vaccination programmes. 

Last summer three of our children were diagnosed with pertussis and reported to the Health Protection Agency (HPA). Molly and Isabelle were 30 months, Eloise was only two weeks old, the. disease ran its course like a mild cough. Were we just lucky or were our “bizarre social reasons” to breast feeding and avoid medicines, why our children that their immune systems have been able to cope with the germs that have come their way. What surprised me was the HPA were not interested in how we coped or why our children had not become seriously ill.  In fact the only subsequent contact we had with the HPA was a call to offer  pertussis vaccination to the children. I explained that contracting the disease  provided life long immunity which the vaccine does not. 

 Another BMJ study in 2005 showed that exposure to illness in day care in infancy reduced the risk of  leukaemia. Prevention of infectious diseases is seen universally as beneficial to the health of society. However few have considered the possibility that natural selection and these diseases, played a role in the development of the immune system to fight more deadly diseases.”

 There is no doubt that the introduction of mass vaccination programmes in

Cuba after the revolution reduced the incidence of death from measles and other

childhood diseases, at a time when sanitation, nutrition and housing was poor.

Cuba now has achieved life expectancy and infant mortality rates similar to

developed countries. However, Cuba also has a high prevalence of autoimmune disorders unusual for a developing country and similar to North America and Europe where vaccination rates are also high.

As long ago as1959 Rene Dubos  argued that all the accomplishments of science and technology would not bring about the “health promoters” dream of universal well-being, because science and technology ignore the dynamic process of adaptation to a constantly changing environment that every living organism must face. Scarlet fever disappeared without a vaccine. We know the environment is changing unfortunately our consumer driven society refuses to allow the human species to adapt with it.