Hear the Silence Campaign

[Guest guest]

We thank JABS for sending this press release and please feel free to

send just a few words asking Channel Five in London to air it. There

are some previous letters, at the bottom of the press release. The

important thing is that the TV station feels that families support the

show so they do not feel intimidated and back down. The email for the

TV station is dutyoffice@... and we thank you for your support, TAAP

Staff

JABS PRESS RELEASE - 15/12/03

HEAR THE SILENCE

JABS welcomes the screening of tonight's Channel Five TV docu-drama

" Hear the Silence " (9.00pm) which is based on real-life parents' stories

about the MMR vaccination and the controversy surrounding Dr

Wakefield and his research suggesting a possible link between the MMR

vaccination and autism. A debate follows the programme which JABS had

hoped would include the vaccine policy officials from the Department of

Health. Unfortunately, those responsible for vaccination policy declined

their invitation to appear. JABS is disappointed that the same people

who openly criticise the research scientists like Dr Wakefield and

parent groups did not have the courage and courtesy to put their case

before the public in this debate.

Since our group was founded in 1994 JABS has been contacted by thousands

of parents concerned about adverse events following childhood

vaccinations many of whom have long term serious problems including

autistic-like symptoms and bowel disorders following MMR vaccines. Some

parents have informed us that their own GP or consultant was not being

effective in treating the child's long term diarrhoea/constipation and

were desperate to be referred to a specialist clinic for diagnosis and

treatment. Many of these parents were provided with information from

JABS on how to contact Dr Wakefield at the Royal Free hospital.

JABS believes the Government's vaccine senior officers have failed to

investigate the children believed to have been damaged. During the

course of a one hour meeting in 1997 (portrayed in the film) a full list

of children, then affected, was presented by JABS and the legal

representatives to the Health Minister, Chief Medical Officer and

Principal Medical Officer . We asked that the Government should

instigate a scientific investigation of the children believed to have

been damaged which could have been useful on two fronts:

1. To answer the question of MMR safety.

2. If the vaccine was found to be causing harm it may have been possible

to identify ''at-risk'' groups and this may have led to a screening

programme which could have improved vaccine safety for all children.

The Health Minister at the time stated she was willing to look at all

scientific evidence but as parents it is very difficult for us to

produce this. That is why we believe the current claims by the vaccine

policy-makers that there is no scientific evidence to show the MMR

vaccine is unsafe will continue to be made. Until the Government

investigates children believed to have been damaged, the ''scientific

evidence'' from the DoH is unlikely to change.

The statement that the health secretary, Reid, made on GMTV in

November 03: " It is unequivocal that there is no evidence at all that

MMR is linked to autism. " needs to be challenged. World experts in the

field of virology and pathology have replicated results found by Dr

Wakefield's team when he was at the Royal Free Hospital, London and

other independent Japanese scientists have also duplicated the findings.

Reid should be reminded that the drug manufacturers of MMR vaccines

have provided his senior medical advisers with a long list of the

adverse reactions known to be associated with their products. These

lists are virtually identical from each of the drug companies. They

state the minor side effects which doctors are happy to share with

parents: namely - rashes, raised temperature etc. These same sheets

also state reactions only recently being publicly acknowledged by the

Health Protection Agency e.g. febrile convulsions, blood disorders

(ITP). The information sheets also state the severe adverse events: to

name but a few - diarrhoea, nerve deafness, arthritis, Guillain Barre

syndrome ( a paralysis syndrome), severe vision problems, seizures and

encephalitis. Encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) can lead to a

range of disabilities such as epilepsy, loss of speech and communication

and acquired autism.

The MMR vaccine contains three live attenuated viruses; their major

disadvantage is a danger of reversion of the virus strains to more

reactive and virulent forms. In plain terms, if the wild virus can cause

inflammation in the brain, joints, spine, eyes, ears and bowel then so

can the vaccine-virus.and to quote an extract from a letter published in

the Times (February 9 2002) from Dr Hall, President of Royal

College of Paediatrics and Child Health : 'Some children develop

encephalitis (brain swelling) when they catch measles, mumps or rubella

viruses and may be left with a variety of handicaps, including physical

and mental impairment, deafness, internal organ damage and autism.....'

Recent press stories have said that there is a parallel between the film

of Brockovich and Hear the Silence, however, Brockovich proved her

case in court. Unfortunately, the MMR victims have had their legal aid

stopped just six months before the cases were to be heard at the high

court in April 2004. There is a case to be answered for the link between

MMR and autism and bowel problems. In the interest of justice, these

children deserve to have the issue of MMR safety resolved in court and

for this we need the help of legal aid.

* Many parents believe that the withdrawal of legal aid prior to the

court cases being heard is another way to delay or prevent access to

justice for vaccine damaged children. The families' representatives were

able to present to the legal aid appeal committee (the Funding Review

Committee) evidence not only that measles virus had been found in

cerebro spinal fluid (CSF) taken from three out of six of the test

cases, but also that it had not been found in 19 out of 20 controls. If

the measles virus is in the CSF then it must almost certainly be in the

brain. Bearing in mind:

* that these children, like all autistic children, suffer from a

form of brain damage,

* that measles is known to be able to cause brain damage and

* that no other cause of autism has been suggested for the overwhelming

majority of the families we are trying to help

Politicians and their senior medical advisers need to stop playing

politics with children's lives. If there is a potential for measles

epidemics they must provide measles vaccines. Critics of our group must

think of this: If our members had been anti-vaccine lobbyists our

children would not have been taken for vaccines and subsequently

damaged. We are parents who put our faith in the system, our children

have reacted usually in the time frame known to the manufacturer and, in

the main, are living with long term problems also known to the

manufacturer.

Background Information

1. The MMR vaccine was introduced into the Japanese health programme at

about the same time as in the UK. Shortly after its introduction

Japanese parents started to complain to the authorities that their

children were suffering severe neurological damage. The Government

failed to act. Other parents started to reject the MMR vaccination for

their children and still the Government failed to act. Outbreaks of

measles occurred and, unfortunately, it was the most vulnerable in

society, the babies under twelve months of age and too young to receive

a measles vaccine, that were hit hardest and 69 deaths were recorded.

The Japanese Government then banned the MMR vaccine and introduced a

policy of separate measles and rubella vaccines. (The single Urabe mumps

vaccine would not have been accepted as it had been held responsible for

the neurological damage when combined in the Japanese MMR vaccine.) The

Japanese MMR court cases were heard in March 2003. Over 1,000 children

were awarded

MMR damages against the Japanese government and the Research Foundation

for Microbial Diseases at Osaka University in Suita, Osaka Prefecture.

2. The UK pre-introductory MMR trials were inadequate in that they

failed to follow up adverse reactions for more than just a few weeks.

Proof of inadequacy is in the knowledge that it took the DoH four years

to identify and withdraw two of the three original MMR brands that had

been introduced into the UK vaccination programme in 1988. These two

brands, Pluserix and Immravax were withdrawn by September 1992 because

they contained a mumps strain known as Urabe which caused mumps

meningitis. Many of the JABS children have had these brands of MMR. It

is also of concern that this problem must have been well known to the

Government as an MMR vaccine containing the Urabe strain had been

suspended in Canada six months before MMR was introduced in this

country.

3. The Government's vaccine policy-makers have failed to provide an

efficient monitoring system for adverse events following vaccination.

The Health Protection Agency in its former role as Public Health

Laboratory's Service is on record in the Lancet (Vol 345. March 4, 1995)

stating ''....there is an urgent need to find more reliable methods of

adverse event surveillance.'' The point being that unless all reactions

are put forward to a central body instead of being dismissed as

''unrelated'' or ''just a coincidence'' the central database will never

hold accurate information on adverse events. How many coincidences are

needed before it becomes meaningful enough to warrant scientific,

clinical investigation?

4. The Government is well aware that vaccines sometimes cause severe

damage; there is a branch of the Department of Social Security known as

the Vaccine Damage Payment Unit. It was set up in 1979 following the

Vaccine Damage Payment Act 1979. MMR vaccine damage payments have been

awarded for various adverse effects including: epilepsy, Guillain-Barre

syndrome (a paralysis condition), SSPE (a brain-wasting condition),

profound deafness and death. We are aware of 24 cases where children

have died after receiving MMR vaccines.

5. Any debate on vaccine damage will have DoH officials quoting the

massive number of doses given to children in the United States. What is

never stated by UK officials is that in the US they have a National

Vaccine Injury Compensation Programme. In the last 12 years this

programme has paid out over $1 billion in payments to vaccine damaged

children of which a 14% share has been paid out for MMR or its

components. The drug companies have to contribute to the programme and

up to August 1997 they had to pay an excise tax on each dose using a

risk-based formula. The DTP and MMR were taxed at $4.56 and $4.44

respectively, polio vaccines at $0.29 and DT (diphtheria/tetanus)

vaccines at $0.06. This must surely give an indication of which vaccines

carry the highest risk of a serious adverse reaction.

6. The problems associated with childhood vaccines is also being

reflected in the United States as has been reported in the United Press

International 13/11/03:

Washington, Nov.13 (UPI) -- More states next year probably will follow

the example of Texas and Arkansas and pass legislation making it easier

for parents to exempt their children from mandatory vaccine

requirements, health experts told United Press International.....The

Texas and Arkansas laws -- driven largely by groups arguing that

vaccines carry too many risks -- passed earlier this year. The laws

allow parents to have their child exempted from the immunizations states

require for school enrollment, such as measles, whooping cough and

polio.

7. If outbreaks of measles, mumps and rubella are feared and parents in

their thousands want to vaccinate against these diseases, why are the

DoH vaccine officials failing to order single injections from the very

drug companies currently supplying the UK market with the MMR vaccines?

JABS believes in a safe vaccination programme but the emphasis is on

safe!

Contact Details:

Jackie Fletcher

JABS (Justice Awareness Basic Support)

1 Gawsworth Road

Golborne

Warrington

Cheshire WA3 3RF

email: jackie@...

website: www.jabs.org.uk

Tel: 01942 713565

***********************************************************

Dr Elliman is WRONG 14 December 2003

Kathleen F. Yazbak,

Director of a Nonprofit Organisation

Boston, MA 02114,

Elliman, Helen Bedford Send response to journal:

Re: Dr Elliman is WRONG

Email Kathleen F. Yazbak, et al.

“Hear the Silence” is a Channel 5 drama due to be aired on Monday, 15

December. The content of this programme has been widely discussed in

newspapers and airwaves across Britain. I am utterly dismayed at the

personal attacks being launched against Dr Wakefield, and am

writing to publicly support his crucial research. The obvious

defensiveness of the public health authorities and government officials

who have aimed their vitriol at Dr Wakefield speaks for itself. If there

were no credence to a potential MMR-Autism link, why would they even

give Dr. Wakefield the time of day? I’d like to mention that many of the

public health authorities who are bemoaning this programme are the very

same ones to whom I have personally written incessantly over the last 6

years, and from whom I have never received a single response, not even

to say, “I’m sorry you believe this happened to your child.” There have

been 2 articles published this week in The Guardian that mention

“inaccuracies

” in the script written by Prager. The source of these

accusations hasn’t been publicly revealed. But the result is that we

have a national British daily that has published unattributed quotes,

and hasn’t even checked out the supposed inaccuracies. This is simply

unethical, immoral and irresponsible. Prager wrote “Hear the

Silence” after meeting many families like mine. t son’s

character, Shields, is an amalgam of the hundreds and

thousands of us who have witnessed, with horror, our previously

normally-developing child regress into autism. “Hear the Silence” has a

strong message: Why is the medical research simply not being allowed? So

I ask, why aren’t the authorities concerned that the incidence of autism

is sky-rocketing? The Scotsman published the following quote just this

week, on 6 December, 20003: “One primary age child in 49 has been

diagnosed with, or is awaiting diagnosis of, autistic spectrum disorder

in the Inverness area, acc!

ording to the survey carried out by the authority’s education

department.” This statistic is staggering. I also wish that the

authorities would stop saying that regressive autism is not a new

phenomenon. Dr. Bernard Rimland, who runs the Autism Research Institute

in San Diego, CA, and who has been compiling statistics on autism for

over 40 years, said on July 14, 2002, “Late onset autism, (starting in

the 2nd year), was almost unheard of in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s; today

such cases outnumber early onset cases 5 to 1, the increase paralleling

the increase in required vaccines.” And if it isn’t MMR, then what is

causing this epidemic? I can tell you that the answer is not to be found

in the epidemiological, or “statistically” based studies that those in

authority purport as the final word. Parents need to be interviewed and

children need to be examined. In my son’s case, when the team at the

Royal Free Hospital conducted biopsies during a colonoscopy, they found

something si!

nister: measles genomic RNA in the walls of his intestine. Why aren’t

the authorities concerned about the presence of vaccination strain

measles in some children with autism? Shouldn’t the health of our

children, and not political imperatives, come first? Isn’t there enough

smoke around this topic to allow parents the choice of single

vaccinations rather than forcing them to choose between MMR or nothing?

Only when the scientific research is allowed will we know definitively

whether MMR causes autism in certain children. Please know that I am one

of thousands of mothers who will not stop being a thorn in the

authorities’ sides until this research occurs. Kathleen Yazbak Boston,

Massachusetts

Competing interests: I am the mother of a 10 year old boy who suffers

from regressive autism and bowel disease, and has measles genomic RNA in

his gut tissue

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/327/7428/1411-a#43455

************************************************************

Dear Sir/Madam:

I'm glad that you are doing the " Hear the Silence " TV show on Monday,

December 15th. I and the other parents of The Autism Autoimmunity

Project support you.

http://autismautoimmunityproject.org/

Below is my response on the BMJ:

As a parent of an adult that was born normal and regressed into autism

after receiving the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine on April 28,

1986 (when he was a year and 3 months old), I'm glad that Hear the

Silence will be aired on Channel 5 TV. I know Wakefield, MD

personally and he is a terrific doctor as well as a terrific human

being. He has risked his career to do the right thing for our children.

He is a hero and those who oppose him show their lack of knowledge about

real science and also a lack of integrity by putting the interest of the

vaccine companies before that of our children.

Our son, , has colitis, elevated measles antibody titers, tested

positive for myelin basic protein antibodies and T-cell abnormalities

indicating an autoimmune disorder. Oleske, MD of UMDNJ, Newark, NJ

(world famous AIDS pediatric immunologist) and Vijendra Singh, PhD. of

Utah State University both found the elevated measles antibody titers in

. Arthur Krigsman, MD of New York, who is replicating Dr.

Wakefield's work found colitis in .

It says quite a bit when the Wakefield was sacked at the Royal

Free Hospital in London, England and that Arthur Krigsman was prevented

from doing his pathology work at hospitals in New York. It says that the

people that are against the science that Dr. Wakefield and Dr. Krigsman

are producing, do not want the truth to come out. It seems apparent that

vaccine companies with their deep pockets control the medical community

to the point that real science and children are sacrificed for the good

of corporate profits. Also, those that oppose the science do not have an

explanation for why children with autism have measles in the gut and/or

elevated measles antibody titers in the blood.

Competing interests: I have an adult with autism that tested for

elevated measles antibody titers and colitis. Also, I'm Founder of The

Autism Autoimmunity Project that funded Dr. Wakefield's

independent research.

Ray Gallup, Founder

The Autism Autoimmunity Project

45 Iroquois Avenue

Lake Hiawatha, NJ 07034

Tel 973-299-9162

--

DEFINITION * TREATMENT * PREVENTION

Autism is 1 in 150 children today, 1 in 68 families! TAAP (The Autism

Autoimmunity Project) is a non profit charity dedicated to obtaining

funding for independent research addressing immune and immunogenetic

abnormalities in autism. Please visit our website for more information

at http://www.AutismAutoimmunityProject.org and help us put an end to

this silent epidemic!!! Know the Cause, FUND the Cure!