[NVIC] Heart vs Head (MMR)

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" Protecting the health and informed consent rights of children since 1982. "

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BL Fisher Note:

The reason that the vaccine safety issue will not go away, including the

debate about the relative safety of the MMR vaccine, is that the real life

experience of the people with vaccine risks is quite different from what

doctors are telling them about vaccine risks. When the people watch their

own children or a friend's child regress before their eyes and become

chronically ill or disabled after vaccination, it doesn't matter what those

with an M.D. or Ph.D. written after their names say.

The empirical evidence is for the head to judge, just as love is a matter

for the heart to judge. Combine the two, the head and the heart, and there

are not enough lies, money or power on earth that will convince the people

that what they know is true is not true.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_horton/2006/04/the_sadness_of_mm

r.html

Guardian Unlimited, UK

Heart vs head

Horton

April 24, 2006 03:19 PM

It's hard to imagine that anything useful could still be written about the

MMR vaccine. Too much has probably been said already, most of it either

wilful nonsense or wild speculation. So I hesitate. And especially because

it was I who was responsible for publishing - to the eternal damnation of

many of my medical and public-health colleagues - Wakefield's 1998

paper that fuelled a smouldering underground movement against the vaccine. A

campaign that we now know was partly linked to efforts to win a legal claim

against vaccine manufacturers.

But this week I have been thinking about the words of a mother who wrote an

incredibly moving piece in The Times in which she described how she " felt

like a criminal " and under suspicion. Why? Simply because she was trying to

do what she thought best for her daughter and son. Ebner described how

she knew that Wakefield's work had been discredited. She knew that she

needed to get her children vaccinated against measles. She was not stupid.

And yet she felt condemned for her wish to seek single vaccines for her

daughter.

She was made to feel uncaring and irresponsible - a bad or even mad parent.

But she had to balance her head with her heart, and her heart won. She urged

the government to show humility. To give parents the choice between MMR and

single vaccines.

We have been having this debate for eight years now. It all seems so futile.

But it has come into focus once again because the population's immunity

against measles has fallen to such a degree that outbreaks are occurring in

unvaccinated communities, putting the children in those communities at great

risk of complications of measles infection. So what should parents and the

government do?

Perhaps the first thing to say is that this issue is not going away anytime

soon. Many of those involved in this tragedy have already given written

evidence in the run up to a hearing at the General Medical Council in which

Wakefield and two of his former colleagues will be pursued for serious

professional misconduct. The date of this hearing has not been set.

But when Wakefield walks into the GMC, he will have a national stage that

has been denied him ever since he used a press conference to call for the

provision of single vaccines. The outcome of the GMC's proceedings could be

lose-lose for the Department of Health. For Wakefield's supporters, he will

either be vindicated as a hero or go down as a martyr to his cause. But the

issue of the MMR vaccine's safety should not be about the reputation of one

man. It should be about evidence and the confidence we have in our

public-health system. The GMC hearing is not designed to address these

matters.

If outbreaks of measles continue and if the present measles immunisation

rate of 81% does not rise faster to a safer level of around 95%, the

Government will surely have to do something different. But the simplistic

dichotomy of single versus triple vaccines is not the choice we have to

make, at least not immediately.

What needs to take place - and amazingly still has not taken place - is an

independently led public discussion about the MMR vaccine. If such a

discussion was to take place, with a genuine effort to put past rancour to

one side, perhaps we might come closer to healing the very bloody schism

that has divided families and doctors for almost a decade. A scientific and

public health truth and reconciliation commission - no blame, no suspicion,

but just a committed effort to reach a reasoned conclusion.

I want to be clear. My view is that the evidence shows MMR vaccine to be

safe. We should have absolute confidence in our national programme of

vaccination. But I want to be able to make that case not only on a blog or

in the pages of the Daily Mail, but also in a quasi-judicial setting where I

can be held to account for my judgement. And where I can hold others to

account for their views too.

If parents could see that a fair debate had taken place - true procedural

justice - then perhaps they would be better equipped to do what was best not

only for their children but also, since that is the way herd immunity works,

for the children of their equally vulnerable neighbours.

Thanks to measles vaccines, global measles deaths fell by 40% between 1999

and 2003. This success depended on a remarkable alliance between parents and

public-health workers. In Britain, that kind of virtuous alliance seems to

have broken down. We all share a responsibility for restoring that trust in

one another. We have, it seems, all failed Ebner.

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