back to previous page

He told the Congressional hearing that their gastrointestinal problems,
such as diarrhoea, seemed to be closely associated with their mental decline.                                                                             

This was not the 'classic autism' where children fail to develop normally
at all, but appeared to be an entirely new disease.

Affected children, he said, tend to have a history of allergic conditions
such as asthma and eczema and a strong family history of 'auto-immune
disease' - where the immune system goes wrong and begins to attack the
body.  Crucial areas of the small and large intestine are inflamed.

And their immune system appears odd. They have low levels of white blood cells, but there is evidence of a strong reaction to the measles virus.  How could all these physical changes cause such profound problems in the brain?

There is evidence that when the gut wall is damaged, harmful morphine-like substances, which would normally be broken down in a healthy person, pass via the bloodstream into the brain.

But how could MMR possibly be involved?  The vaccine, launched in the UK in 1988 and now given to children at 15 months and again before starting school, contains only tiny doses of weakened, if live, mumps, measles and rubella virus.  Dr. Wakefield admitted to the Congressional committee that he does not know.

There is evidence from 30 years ago, however, to suggest that having more than one of these childhood infections at one time may increase the
chance of autism. Studies had also shown that the mumps part of the MMR vaccine can interfere with the body's response to the measles and the rubella components.

The theory is that if they infect a child at the same time, say through a
combined vaccine, measles and mumps viruses may interact. This may
explain why, if it is the measles virus which triggers autism, there were not more cases when measles was more prevalent.

Yesterday, the parents of autistic children in Britain and America, Rosemary Kessick among them, were demonstrating on the streets of London,
Edinburgh and Washington DC in an attempt to shame governments into taking the disease more seriously.

Rosemary, 43, a former business analyst from Peterborough who runs the
charity Allergy Induced Autism, has been told that samples from William,
now 12, were among those that Professor O'Leary's laboratory tested positive.

William needs constant supervision and the mother of three said: "I weep
for the children who have been lost since I first took my own son to Andy
Wakefield.

"I feel our children have been sacrificed for the greater good. The
authorities just do not seem to be able to see that although the
vaccination has done a lot of good it is possible it may have done some children harm.

"My child was never exposed to measles. Nobody I even knew when he was little had it, so where did the measles virus in his gut come from? The only contact that I, as his mother know of, is through the live, attenuated part of the MMR vaccine."

Parents in the UK come under enormous pressure from health visitors and GPs to have their children vaccinated with MMR, with some families thrown off doctors' medical lists for refusing.

The Government blocked the import of measles-only vaccine last year.
Parents who want the single vaccine are forced to go overseas.

If measles virus infection - from whatever source - is confirmed to be
causing the chronic bowel changes and brain damage in at least this group of autistic children, it may be possible to find a treatment.

Indeed, many parents have found that a strict diet can help.

Last night, the Department of Health poured scorn on Professor O'Leary's study. Interestingly, however, a week ago the Medical Research Council announced a massive survey of two million people across the UK aimed at finding out more about autism and which would 'be able to examine any possible association between autism and the MMR vaccine.'

The Professor, who has now decided to widen his collaboration with Dr.
Wakefield, said: "The time is now for real research. We need to work out
what is going on."

For the hundreds of parents like Rosemary Kessick, that research cannot
be done soon enough.

back to start of this article              vaccine index