Time for a Public Enquiry on MMR

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Daily Mail Editorial Comment 1st July
 
Time for a Public Enquiry on MMR
 
Can there be any doubt that the attitude of the Government and its medical advisors towards the MMR jab is now putting children at serious risk?
 

Measles cases have reached a five-year high, after a fourfold rise in the number reported in the first three months of this year. And the areas most affected were those in which the take-up of the single jab had fallen after growing fears that it could be linked to autism.

 

Yet how does the Government respond to such fears? It seeks to dismiss them with the despicable claim that parents are being put off by media scare-mongering.

 

That really will not wash. Only last week, Sunderland University reported research that suggested one in every 1500 MMR jabs may trigger autism.

 

Before that, specialists at New York University told a U.S. Congressional committee on autism that research corroborated the conclusions of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the London expert who first sounded the alarm bells about the vaccine four years ago.

 

These are not stories invented by the media but the findings of leading medical researchers.
Public anxiety is not being allayed by an administration whose leader refuses to say unequivocally if his own child has had the vaccine, and which will not allow parents to choose separate inoculations.

 

Evidence appears regularly suggesting a connection between MMR and autism. And every time the issue is raised, Ministers counter by citing contradictory research.

 

No wonder parents are confused and concerned - and turning against the jab in increasing numbers. Their worries will not be overcome by Ministers simply turning up the volume of their hectoring.

 

With its recent change of mind over vaccination against foot-and-mouth, the government has belatedly shown a willingness to re-think a policy it once declared inviolate. It needs to show the same sensitivity on the MMR jab.

 

The situation cries out for a full-blown and unfettered commission of enquiry to examine every scrap of evidence concerning the safety of the triple vaccine. Anything less will open Ministers to the charge of failing in their duty to the public.
 

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