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 Andrew 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.