MMR:Autism - Why did my son suffer? Kathleen Yazbak/Hear The Silence based on her story

[Guest guest]

Dr. Yazbak's daughter Kathleen & grandson Theo

• Hear The Silence will be screened on Monday 15 December on Five.

http://www.news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1348422003

Why did my son suffer?

Bonnie Estridge

Watching her son walk through the school gates, Kathleen Yazbak is haunted

by a moment in her past. Some days the feeling catches her more than

others, as children greet each other; hugging, chatting or racing around

before the bell rings. This stab to the heart comes from the fleeting

memory of a fateful decision that changed her life for ever when, six years

ago, Kathleen let her four-year-old son have his MMR booster.

Theo, 10, whose aggressive behaviour used to cause havoc, is now a calm,

sweet boy, thanks to endless therapy and a gluten-and dairy-free diet. But

the fact is, he still has problems. He looks uncomfortable, hanging back

from the crowd. He cannot be involved in group activities because he is

unable to interact with his peers and would far rather be on his own, in

front of a computer, than relating to other children. Theo looks

disconnected from the world around him - as if he doesn’t belong.

To see her son so isolated is hard for Kathleen, but three years ago it was

unbearable. Then, her eldest child was clearly in a far more painful world

of his own, often screaming, clutching his head or lashing out at anything

or anyone in his way. But what really hurts is knowing that Theo, like a

surprising number of children his age, is autistic and will never be

perfect again.

Kathleen, 37, was one of the first parents to raise concerns about their

children’s sudden change in behaviour. She gave up her career in executive

recruitment and spent all her waking hours trying to find out what had

happened to him.

She was one of the first to make what appears to be the link between the

MMR vaccine and late-onset autism - although many experts believe the high

incidence of autism reported around the time of the jab is coincidental,

and that this is the age at which the condition is normally diagnosed.

Kathleen was at the forefront of the movement to encourage the medical

world to give answers to the desperate parents of damaged children. Her

story is about to be told in a moving TV drama, Hear The Silence, starring

t son.

" I have a friend who lived in a street in which three out of 15 families

had an autistic child, " says Kathleen. " All these children had been

vaccinated with MMR. What does that say? My husband said that I was crazy,

losing my mind, when I told him my theory. My father, who is a

paediatrician, dismissed me out of hand.

" The latest study by the National Autistic Society has shown that one in 80

primary-school children in the UK has late-onset autism, meaning they have

developed it in their second year - after taking the vaccine.

Traditionally, it is more normal to be diagnosed before the age of one.

Before MMR was introduced in 1988, that statistic was one in 2,500. Can I

be crazy believing there is a link? The British government appears to think

so. "

Having appeared to regress from a normal development after his first

vaccination at a year old, Theo appeared to be reasonably normal until the

booster at four. Within days of this, says Kathleen, he was banging into

everything and could no longer say words that he had previously learned

easily. Six months later, he was screaming constantly and holding the side

of his head as if in pain. Incidents as depicted in the film, showing him

deliberately ramming a supermarket trolley into a shopper, had become all

too common. His mother was bewildered and despairing.

Believed by his GP to have continual ear infections, Theo had taken 12

courses of antibiotics over a year when Kathleen, at the end of her tether,

took him to every kind of doctor and expert in child development she could

find. When she was eventually given the diagnosis of autism, she threw

herself into research on the internet to see what might have caused this to

happen. She agonised over whether anything " different " had happened in

Theo’s life that might be linked to his illness.

" The timing of the dates of his MMR tied in completely. I put out an e-mail

on an autism site asking if anyone else had noticed a correlation. I was

overwhelmed when I had almost a hundred replies. "

Then in November 1998 she heard Dr Wakefield talk about his research

at the Royal Free Hospital in which he had found evidence of the measles

virus in the gut wall of a number of autistic children who had been given

MMR - that was when she knew Theo’s only exposure to measles had been the

vaccine. " Dr Wakefield had given us parents a voice by telling the world

that his research suggested a possible link. " But in a very short time, the

majority of the medical establishment proclaimed the link to be false, the

government rubbished Wakefield’s claims and cut his funds, causing the

closure of his research department. Kathleen says that she and many others

immediately suspected a cover-up. " The attitude was, and still is,

completely ostrich-like. There is no public money being put into

researching this issue.

" We all understand that the government wants to get children vaccinated,

but what price do we have to pay for herd immunity? Is it acceptable that

people’s lives get torn apart without finding out why? My younger son Lucas

was given the first vaccine, but I refused the booster. Even so, he suffers

from attention deficit disorder, another neurological disorder.

" Unlike in the film, my marriage did not break up - but I know

many people to whom this has happened and, more importantly, there are all

these poor children who are suffering. No-one is trying to say that we

shouldn’t vaccinate - Dr Wakefield never suggested this - but originally we

were led to believe that there would be a choice between the MMR and single

vaccines at lengthy intervals. There is no choice on the NHS any more and

people need to be able to make that choice. "

A fleeting appearance in Hear The Silence is made by Tony Blair. A roomful

of mothers berate him while watching the TV appearance in which he refused

to divulge whether baby Leo had been vaccinated.

" He didn’t lie through his teeth, " says Kathleen. " But because he chose to

stay silent, we have to draw our own conclusions. This highlights the fact

that the medical establishment have put up a wall, beyond which they do not

want us to go. The way Wakefield has been treated is appalling; he

was trying to help us to get to the bottom of why these children should

become ill. But the consequences for everyone have been profoundly

disturbing. "

• Hear The Silence will be screened on Monday 15 December on Five.

The MMR story

THE first signs of controversy over the MMR vaccine emerged in February

1998 when Dr Wakefield of London’s Royal Free Hospital suggested

that the MMR vaccine could be linked to an increased risk of autism and

bowel disorders. The following month a review by 37 experts at the Medical

Research Council concluded that there was " no evidence to indicate any link " .

In April 2000, Wakefield and Professor O’Leary of Coombe Women’s

Hospital, Dublin, presented research to the US Congress. Their tests on 25

children showed that 24 had traces of the measles virus in their gut, which

O’Leary described as " compelling evidence " of a link between autism and

MMR. But by December, a new Medical Research Council review of research

found no link between autism and the vaccine. The public did not seem

convinced and statistics show that for the period May to December 2001, the

average number of packs of single measles vaccines imported into the UK was

1,050 per month, compared with 115 in 2000.

February 2002 saw a paper published by Dr Wakefield and Professor O’Leary

suggesting a possible link between the measles virus and bowel disease in

children with developmental disorders. At the same time, a team from the

Royal Free Hospital concludes that there is no link. Their study looked at

500 children with autism, born between 1979 and 1998. As the debate raged,

the government described it as " media hysteria " .

Last month, Simon Murch, a researcher on the original 1998 study, said in a

letter to the Lancet that many major studies had proved the MMR vaccine to

be safe. He also warned that with MMR uptake as low as 61 per cent in parts

of London, a measles outbreak is increasingly likely. A Department of

Health spokesman said: " This reinforces our advice to health professionals

to continue to encourage parents that MMR is safe and the best way to avoid

three potentially serious diseases. "

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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

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******

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