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Family sues over alleged MMR link to autism

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Hello everyone,

 

Sorry the following came through to me yesterday, but I overlooked it however it seem this is better late than never A SCOTS family will launch a multi-million-pound lawsuit at the High Court in London today, claiming the MMR vaccine was responsible for causing autism in their child.

 

The test case, which could open the floodgates to hundreds of similar actions, is set to reignite the fierce debate over the safety of the mumps, measles and rubella jab.

 

for the rest of this news article http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=115342006

 

Steve..

 

I think the boy means well but he is distinctly inclined to be inattentive......

Tutor of Winston Churchill to Lord Randolph Churchill,

Winston's father

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All I can say is all the best to them.The mmr booster was definately responsible for causing my daughter's autistic encephalitus.Fortunately she recovered but we were told originally she would never recover and stay like that for life.

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Does Laurence Prove That Some Doctors Want To Hide The Truth About MMR?

 

By Sue Corrigan for the Mail, UK. Link not available.

 

Dr Andrew Wakefield faces ruin because raised doubts about a

controversial vaccination, but the astonishing story of this youngster's

suffering - and cure - could be the vital clue that shows the scientist was

right all along..

On the day just over three years ago that Prime Minister Tony Blair

first triumphantly claimed victory for the Govern�ment in the fight to prove

MMR safe, Sue McGowan was too busy even to notice.

She was focusing all her attention on keeping her ten-year-old

autistic son, Laurence, alive with the only thing he could still bear to

swallow. 'Six teaspoons of cranberry juice, every half-hour. That's how

critical it got in the end,' says the mother of four from Kenilworth, near

Birming�ham. 'I took Laurence out of school in 2001, when he first began

refusing food and looked after him at home by myself. Nobody came near us

for the next two-and-a-half years.'

It is just before Christmas and we are in a hotel room on Long Island,

just off the coast of New York, on the final stage in Mrs McGowan's

eight�-year quest to discover what is making her small, pale son so ill. In

a few hours, 13-year-old Laurence is to undergo medical tests he could have

had years ago in Britain, but has repeatedly been denied by doctors and NHS

hospitals. His parents had to borrow ?7,000 to finance the trip. But now he

will get the tests with two of the very few specialists in the world openly

willing to investigate him.

One is gastroenterologist and paediatrician Dr Arthur Krigsman, an

associate professor at New York University. The other is Dr Andrew

Wakefield, the clinical researcher driven out of Britain and now living in

America after suggesting a link between a new form of bowel disease - which

Laurence appears to suffer from - autism and the Measles, Mumps and Rubella

(MMR) triple vaccination.

With Laurence the first of a num�ber of autistic British children the

two men have agreed to treat, and parent activists claiming there are at

least 2 000 sick children who can't get treatment in Britain, a great deal

hangs on the tests to be carried out on this snowy day in Long Island.

If they show Laurence has long been suffering from a painful

inflamma�tory disease that has gone untreated in the UK, as Dr Wakefield

firmly believes they will, then the entire British political and medical

estab�lishment's approach to the bitter MMR controversy will be open to new

questioning.

On the other hand, if the endo�scopies, tissue biopsies and blood

tests show nothing, then the reputa�tion and standing of the already

embattled Dr Wakefield will be fur�ther undermined.

British doctors have repeatedly insisted there is nothing physically

wrong with Laurence. If he is indeed just a 'fussy eater', or his bowel

prob�lems are a standard by-product of brain damage, 49-year-old Dr

Wake�field knows he'll be condemned for encouraging British parents to

embark on an arduous and expensive wild-goose chase.

Laurence began suffering from a strange, undiagnosed gut disorder from

the age of five. By nine, he was shunning all food and most liquids. With a

swollen, distended belly and stick-thin arms and legs, he weighed just

two-and-a-half stone.

Some time later he did start eating again, but that is when he also

began screaming for hours at a time, hitting out violently and waking

repeatedly through the night. Alternating between diarrhoea attacks and

severe constipation, he also suffered two bowel haemorrhages last year.

But the many doctors and hospitals his mother approached for help,

responded oddly. As soon as she men�tioned her son was autistic,

appoint�ments were refused or cancelled.

A letter in Laurence's thick file of medical notes reveals that a

gastro�enterologist at a Midland's hospital tried to have him admitted to a

psy�chiatric ward without even examining him. Staff at another hospital

sug�gested Social Services be called in, suspecting Mrs McGowan might be

starving her son deliberately. In view of Laurence's obvious ill health,

these responses bewildered his mother.

'Why not just investigate the child? It's pretty simple, isn't it?'

Mrs McGowan says indignantly. 'No one would even explain to me why he

couldn't have any tests, apart from just saying, over and over again, "It's

his autism. It's all just part of being autistic." The best one casualty

doc�tor could do, when I seriously thought Laurence was about to die, was

sug�gest I try organising his food in a dif�ferent pattern on his plate.'

So why couldn't the McGowans get medical help for their son any�where

in Britain? And what of par�ents' claims that thousands of other autistic

children around the UK are similarly being denied tests and treat�ment?

In a six-week investigation, The Mail on Sunday has talked to many

parents of autistic children throughout Britain about their experiences.

One mother says the same gastroenterologist who tried to get Laurence

admitted to a psychiatric ward refused to inves�tigate her desperately ill

daughter too, saying only that any tests would be 'inappropriate'.. What

would lead a doctor to say that to a mother pleading for help for her child?

And why would an NHS consul�tant in a London teaching hospital tell another

parent he would investigate her autistic son's intestinal problems if he

could, but 'I'm not allowed'?

The answer is that these children, and their symptoms, are the front

line of the battle over MMR, and of claims that the live measles virus in

the MMR triple vaccine may be caus�ing gut and brain damage.

In an article published in the Lancet medical journal in 1998, Dr

Wakefield and a team at London's Royal Free Hospital claimed to have

discovered, in 12 brain-damaged children, a pre�viously unrecognised bowel

disease, later dubbed by Wakefield 'autistic entero-colitis'.

Colonoscopies performed on scores of autistic children and teenagers

in the United States, Italy and Venezuela have since backed up his claim of

an apparently new disease, differing in several crucial ways from the well

�recognised inflammatory bowel dis�eases Crohn's and ulcerative colitis.

Dr Wakefield's highly controversial assertion is that this new gut

disease may be causing brain damage in cer�tain vulnerable children,

resulting in a particular form of autism.

Even leaving aside the vexed ques�tion of whether or not MMR jabs

could be one cause of the bowel dam�age, this theory overturns decades of

received medical wisdom; that autism is a genetic brain disorder with which

children are born.

According to the British medical and scientific establishments, this

is a baseless medical scare story. They say there is no credible evidence a

new form of bowel disease exists in autistic children, let alone that the

live measles virus in the MMR jab, first given to children at around 13

months of age, may be causing it.

Mr Blair declared the matter set�tled back in October 2002, when his

official spokesman boasted at a Downing Street media briefing: 'We are

winning the argument that MMR is safe.' The PR campaign designed to reassure

nervous parents still had some way to go, the spokesman con�ceded, but

'intellectually', the Gov�ernment was winning its case.

But this battle is not over, and caught in the middle of no-man's-land

are thousands of children just like Laurence, repeatedly being refused even

the most routine investigations. In many cases, doctors are refusing even to

see children before announ�cing that tests aren't necessary.

The very few gastroenterologists and paediatricians in Britain who are

agreeing to investigate and treat autistic children with bowel disease are

doing so not only in secrecy, but even fear. Their names are passed along a

network of parent and scien�tific activists and none was willing to speak

publicly.

A senior paediatric gastroenterolo�gist at a major London teaching

hos�pital did, however, agree to comment off the record. 'The points you

raise about children with autism having difficulty in accessing medical

ser�vices in Britain are well made and have been of concern to me for some

time,' he said

One mother says her GP refused to refer her autistic child to the

Royal Free where some extremely ill children are still being investigated

and treated, on the grounds that the specialists there had been

'discred�ited' for doing this work.

Finding any form of bowel disease in autistic children is not, it

seems, a smart career move these days, so many doctors are refusing even to

look. Mrs McGowan says: 'They've all seen what happened to Dr Wake�field and

they're petrified.'

Later this year, Dr Wakefield and two former colleagues from the Royal

Free face a hearing before the UK's General Medical Council on charges of

professional misconduct relating to their original research. If found guilty

all three could be struck off the med�ical register in the UK.

The charges relate to Sunday Times allegations that the research was

begun at the behest of lawyers act�ing for some 1,200 parents planning to

sue MMR's three manufacturers, and was partly funded by a ?55,000 grant from

the Legal Aid Board. Freelance reporter Brian Deer claimed Dr Wakefield

concealed this from his fellow researchers and failed to declare the

apparent con�flict of interest to The Lancet when submitting the team's

findings.

Dr Wakefield, who now runs a clinic for autistic children in Austin,

Texas, is currently suing both Mr Deer and The Sunday Times for defamation,

and says he is confident he will be cleared by the GMC.

And he firmly believes the Long Island tests will show Laurence is

suffering from bowel disease.

Breaking a long, self-imposed media silence to speak to The Mail on

Sunday, he said: 'There's nothing ambiguous or uncertain about Laurence's

condition in my mind. He has all the appearances of a child with intestinal

disease.

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I read this yesterday and have just scanned a national newspaper and even been checking Sky News and there is no mention of it, considering what could happen if the families won this case I thought at least there would be a bit in the Daily Mirror regarding this or even a mention on Sky news.

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I have read the article a couple of times but the 'Daily Mail Speak' inside it makes it difficult to determine what it is actually saying. I think there is probably a good article to be written on this topic, but I don't think this is it.

 

If they show Laurence has long been suffering from a painful

inflammatory disease that has gone untreated in the UK, as Dr Wakefield

firmly believes they will, then the entire British political and medical

establishment's approach to the bitter MMR controversy will be open to new

questioning.

 

I am not all that sure how this boy having a bowel disease proves the MMR vaccine is safe or unsafe, they seem less related than the article implies to me.

 

Even leaving aside the vexed question of whether or not MMR jabs

could be one cause of the bowel damage, this theory overturns decades of

received medical wisdom; that autism is a genetic brain disorder with which

children are born.

 

There is no received medical opinion on this. Decades ago the refrigerator mother theory was top of the list, other theories have come and gone. There certainly appears to be a genetic link in some cases, but there is little consensus beyond the fact that Autism may well have more than one cause.

 

What this article does to is highlight the stand-off that has been i place for the last few years. The evidence that MMR causes Autism relates almost exclusively to individual cases where a parent has observed thst a childs Autistic Systems began with the MMR jab, and I am not minimising the impact of this in any way and I can see why these parents are absolutely convinced of the dangers of MMR.

 

On the other side of the coin many children may become gravely ill as a direct result of the reduction in vaccination rates. The vaccinations are not a random act of malevolence foisted on an unwilling public, they adress a serious and genuine public health issue.

 

The problem in proving the negative effects of MMR is that numerically based studies (Where they count the proportion of children with Autism in a vaccinated population vs the proportion of children in the unvaccinated popultion) have failed to produce any clear or compelling eveidence that vaccines cause an increase in the numbers of children with Autism which is why succesive Governments have (this far) supported the MMR jab.

 

The unanswered quiestion to me is has the MMR jab triggered a regression that would have happened anyway, or has the vaccine 'caused' autism, and it is not one that can easily be answered. I do find some of the conpspiracy theories on both sides of the debate hard to swallow though.

 

It will be interesting to see how the case progresses. I think it will be succesful in raising awareness but I think the chances of winning are quite small.

 

Simon

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The unanswered quiestion to me is has the MMR jab triggered a regression that would have happened anyway, or has the vaccine 'caused' autism, and it is not one that can easily be answered. I do find some of the conpspiracy theories on both sides of the debate hard to swallow though.

 

I've wondered that one too whether the MMR has triggered something that would have happened later or made a milder autistic tendency more apparent. Such a theory would fit in with both the epidemiological studies that prove no link (because the children would have gone onto develop ASD at some point anyway) but also back up the anecdotal stories of parents whose children developed signs of ASD with days of having the jab. As far as I know there has been no research looking at this particular aspect

 

Liz x

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I'm not intending to be controversial but I don't think MMR (or mercury) are the only considerations.

 

Apart from any mercury/MMR issue, there's also the fillers. There's a list of some potential ones at

http://www.mercola.com/2001/mar/7/vaccine_ingredients.htm

 

Vaccination has an effect on the adrenal glands, which if they are overwhelmed can result in decreased ability to cope with stress. It may be a factor in why some people are convinced that MMR caused autism in their child, rather than just the MMR itself. But what about the possibility that ANY vaccination could trigger it in susceptible children?

 

It could be the challenge of MMR on the adrenal glands, (or even several challenges from single jabs, which apart from more shocks to the adrenal glands, introduce more fillers). So apart from the vaccine itself, the fillers, there's the condition of the adrenal glands at the time of vaccination, (perhaps connected to genetics, stress in the womb, birth complications etc) and what other stressors follow vaccination. For instance might there be an allergic/immune/stress response to a substance that is ingested or absorbed every day from food and toiletries etc, for which the body might have been ?primed? by a vaccine filler? An example is that formaldehyde has been used as a vaccine filler, and is found in some toiletries, including children's bubble baths.

 

Maybe the research parameters need to be widened?

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I think the most interesting thing that came out of that piece of research by Wakefield was that the MMR vaccine strain of measles was found in the spinal fluid and therefore the brain.

 

It's a shame that so much public research money has been spent on epidemiology which will never show up a subset of a subset of the population, rather than something that will help.

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Problem with that Measles in the spinal fluid thing; Wakefield was unable to prove it wasn't a false positive caused by cross-contamination. Plenty other people have looked at the same guts and samples as Wakefield and come to very different conclusions from him.

 

My own opinion remains the same: vaccines cannot make a Neurotypical into an Autistic, but there is a case that Autistics are sensitive to them and the subsequent response is misread as the 'normal' child becoming Autistic after a jab.

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Yes a lot of money has been wasted going over that original Wakefield research: his study was not designed to be definitive. Vijay Singh's work on autism, MMR and auto-immunity makes interesting reading.

 

I think the Wakefield debacle set back research by at least 10 years, shamefully.

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