Thoughts on the MMR Vaccine

My wife an I got married in 1998. That’s the same year disgraced and now disbarred physician Andrew Wakefield published his falsified study linking the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR here-on) vaccine to autism.

Being newly married and without children the furore passed us by. Roll forward two years and in early 2000 we were expecting our first child. By now there was a growing outcry against Wakefield’s suggested link, and strong push-back from both physicians and pharmaceutical companies against the findings.

For ourselves, we, well, really me, were wary of the combined vaccine, though not for reasons stemming from Wakefield’s 12 child ‘study’. For the putative link to autism I was confused because all the information I’d researched showed autism to be genetic and, as such, no vaccine could ‘make you’ autistic.

My concern at the time was giving the triple vaccine to a child only a year old. My concern was the load that may place on a child’s system. Sure, the extant studies didn’t, and don’t support my views, but I was a new father concerned for the best welfare of their child.

At that point in the UK you could still opt to have separate vaccines, instead of the single one, however they came at a price we were unable to afford at the time. Our son was vaccinated with the triple vaccine. Both my wife and I had experienced childhood measles, and I had been extremely ill with mumps while young. It was not something we wished for our child with a vaccine available.

A few weeks after getting the vaccine, our son was in hospital with a mystery virus. The NHS provided great care but no result other than ‘a virus’ was given, and an absolute assurance that there could be no link to the MMR vaccine.

I remained unconvinced.

While our son did receive his second dose of the vaccine, our two daughters received neither - and affordability of the separate vaccines meant these were beyond our means. Fundamentally, we were relying on other folks being vaccinated to protect my girls.

The selfishness of this was something we struggled with, and discussed. In the end we felt the coverage would provide the level of protection needed, and the girls could get the vaccine later. One certainly has.

In his first year of school our son was diagnosed with autism.

Did this change my view on their being a link between the MMR vaccine and autism? No, because autism is a genetic condition. Did I then believe the vaccine had triggered the gene? Again, no, because the autism was there all along, but masked by the fact that he is also hyper-active.

To fully put the nail in the coffin of any potential vaccine-to-autism link for any readers, our youngest, non-MMR vaccinated, daughter was also diagnosed with autism. Due to the age difference between her and her brother, we recognised signs early and were able to get things diagnosed quickly.

It turns out autism runs in at least my wife’s side of the family, her brother has a daughter who is severely autistic, and realistically in both sides taking into account my later diagnosis and reflecting on my mother and grandfather. We are fortunate that my son’s autism is high functioning and my daughter, while having developmental delays, is verbal.

What has made me consider these matters, and decisions made twenty-odd years ago?

The damage which Andrew Wakefield did to trust in vaccines continues to reverberate. Since the advent of Covid distrust in these effective medications has risen to the point that there are now outbreaks of measles in various places.

It’s worth considering the history of the three diseases covered by the MMR vaccine.

In the US an average of 6,000 children died of measles each year in the 1910’s. Improvements in health care and management meant that by the time a vaccine was created in the sixties the average deaths was down to between four and five hundred a year. By the year 2000 measles was viewed as eliminated in the US as there was no longer continuous disease transmission.

Mumps is a far less severe virus than measles, with a death rate of up to 4 per 10,000. However, it is a virus which can have far reaching effects for those who experience it. Deafness, infertility (especially in boys who contract it during puberty), and heart disease all being risks.

Rubella is, of the three, the one I find most distressing for the complications which arise in children, and definitely in pregnancies. Over 80% of mother who catch Rubella in the first trimester will have a miscarriage or still-birth. Where the child survives they are at high risk for a range of issues from deafness, through heart defects, to brain damage.

That people are putting their children at risk on the basis tthey don’t trust vaccines, despite multi-decades proof of efficacy, is scary.

I’ve been wondering what we would do if it was now we had to decide on vaccinating our children.

I’m not sure.

I still believe in the efficacy of vaccines (I was in a trial group for the Pfizer Covid one, and got my 3rd booster yesterday). But I still believe there is a risk for some children from a triple vaccine at 12-15 months old. That belief comes from understanding that my son had the following factors affecting him: autism, from both maternal and familial sides; Ehlers Danloss Syndrome; Epilepsy due to misplaced brain tissue.

When he was born we didn’t know about the autism in either side of the family, though could trace it back afterwards. The Ehlers Danloss had not yet been diagnosed in my wife. The type of epilepsy he has does not manifest immediately. He had been diagnosed with autism a few years before his seizures started (and,to be clear, the brain tissue issues predate the vaccine).

Unfortunately now, in Britain, there is no option of single vaccines. I guess in the current situation I’d go for the possible couple of weeks in hospital due to a ‘mystery virus’ a few weeks after the MMR, rather than the heightened risk of esposure to disease and death the individual viruses present.

If you cant rely on a majority of people to do the sensible thing, then it’s the lower risk.

It's possible that, if Andrew Wakefield had made his study wider than 12 children and reflected on autism being a genetic condition, that we would be further down the road to protecting the general mass of humanity while also having protocls in place to seek out those with higher risk factors and providing them with comfort and assurance which does not weigh on the side of 'Oh, it CAN'T be the MMR vaccine which has landed your child in hospital.'

We aren't.

Get your children vaccinated for their sake and your grandchildren's. There are too many folks who think a facebook meme is research.

text by stuartcturnbull, picture by Myriams-Fotos via Pixabay