White, middle-class, loving mums. And their stupidity could kill your child

[Guest guest]

more accurate science - when there isn't it, smear......................

Sheri

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2231905,00.html

White, middle-class, loving mums. And their stupitidy could kill

your child

Cristina Odone

It isn’t enough that my daughter has had her MMR jab. Her

friends must have them too

THE CHILDREN’S birthday party was in full swing: balloons,

jelly, organic milk, Marmite sandwiches and rosy faces. One of the other

mothers ruffles her three-year-old’s hair: “There was no way I was going to

let Harry have the MMR — he’s the only child I’m going to have and I don’t

want him going autistic on me.”

Panic-stricken, I look around the room: nine toddlers, aged

between 2 and 4. How many of their mothers share this one’s view about MMR?

How many of these children have never been immunised? Given that herd

protection needs a vaccination rate of 92 per cent, it is not enough that my

own daughter, almost 3, has received her MMR jabs; her friends need to be

vaccinated too.

I want to go up to the woman and shake her: do you realise you

risk hurting, even killing, your son and those he comes in contact with?

Measles can kill, mumps can lead to infertility and deafness, and a pregnant

woman infected with rubella has an 83 per cent chance of giving birth to a

child with some deformity. Yet parents such as her get away with it. They

are middle-class and clean-cut, well meaning and well spoken. We indulge

them because they assure us, ever so eloquently, that they are motivated by

parental love. We cut them slack because we are convinced that even

irrational fear, when in such cosy packaging, cannot have dangerous

consequences.

We are wrong. Last week the Health Protection Agency reported

the worst incidence of measles in 20 years. Three months ago the first child

in 14 years was killed by the virus. Pockets of infection have surfaced in

Surrey and in Yorkshire. We face a real health scare, because rogue parents

fell for a bogus health scare — the one linking the MMR vaccine to autism.

It is eight years since Wakefield began agitating against

the MMR jab. In that time he managed to persuade hundreds of thousands to

keep their children from taking part in the immunisation programme. Dr

Wakefield, a former gut surgeon, was an extraordinarily convincing

spokesman: when he made public his claims at a press conference at the Royal

Free he throbbed with messianic ardour and heartfelt concern for those poor

innocents whom the State wished to inject with poison.

When he faced critics who pointed out that he built his thesis

on a skewed sample of only 12 children, he played the medical martyr who

risked his career for the good of others.

Anxious parents, unsure of their science and suspicious of the

nanny state, were Dr Wakefield’s apostles. They rushed to spread his message

and live out his commandments.

Boden-wearing mothers and SUV-driving fathers refused to do the

authorities’ bidding and vowed to protect their children from the evil that

would be perpetrated against them.

The Boden sundress and capable car determined the reaction that

these parents aroused. Countless mothers and fathers shivered at the images

of a middle-class couple looking on as their autistic son failed to show any

sign of recognition. Even some doctors took seriously their descriptions of

a terrifying fear and an all-engulfing guilt: these people were obviously

educated, perhaps even knew something of biology, so their experience and

worries could not be dismissed out of hand. The media loved to feature their

harrowing tales, relishing the contrast between these couples’ orderly and

well-heeled existence and the dark, primitive fear that prompted them to

rebel against the authorities. As for the Government, the Blairites didn’t

dare take on this powerful and influential constituency, and opted out of

forcing MMR upon all school children — a surefire method adopted already in

America, where a child’s inoculation records must be presented before

admission to any school.

Now: imagine the brouhaha if the Wakefield weirdos had been not

middle-class whites but, let’s say, Muslims. Other parents would have been

up in arms, raging against the superstitious claptrap that risked landing

their little one in hospital. The media would have wallowed in coverage of

semi-literate households where a patriarch brandishing a well-thumbed copy

of the Koran chased away the doctors, social services and all other Western

busybodies.

The analogy is hardly preposterous. When imams in Nigeria

managed to persuade tens of thousands of followers that they should boycott

the polio vaccine because it was actually a Western plot to render them

infertile, the ensuing outcry was almost racist in its condescension: what,

don’t they know any better? But the same can be asked of the middle-class

parents who joined the anti-MMR crusade.

Dr Wakefield failed to disclose that the parents of 11 of the 12

children in his original study were suing the manufacturers of the MMR

vaccine; and that he had been hired to help them by a firm of solicitors.

Since then scientific evidence against Dr Wakefield’s findings has been

conclusive: epidemiological and virological studies, including one that

examined half a million children born in Denmark, found absolutely no link

between the MMR vaccine and autism. Yet middle-class mummies and daddies

still wear opposition to MMR like a badge of honour.

The General Medical Council last week, quite rightly, started

disciplinary proceedings against Dr Wakefield. But while he could be struck

off the medical register, vilified as the Abu Hamza of the medical

profession, what of his followers? We need to deal with the hysterical

middle-class parents who, in the name of love, risk dragging Britain back to

an era of high child mortality. The answer lies in education, education,

education: we cannot force parents to become scientifically literate, but we

can ensure that their children’s attendance of schools, state or private,

depends on their having had a complete set of jabs. Only then will the

well-clad, well-heeled troops turn round their SUVs and beat a retreat.

--------------------------------------------------------

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

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

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