Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR)
Live Attenuated Triple Vaccine

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Prior to vaccination, measles virus infected over 100,000 children a year in the UK - killing around 100 every year. It is still a major killer and cause of serious illness in children around the world. Measles causes: Diarrhoea (1 in 6) Ear infection - usually no permanent hearing loss (1 in 20) Pneumonia (1 in 25) Convulsions (1 in 200) Meningitis/encephalitis (1 in 1,000) Death (1 in 2,500-5,000) Severe, progressive demyelenating neurological illness called sub-acute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) (1 in 1,000,000)

Mumps is also a serious illness, responsible for over a thousand cases of meningitis in children in the UK before MMR was introduced. Mumps virus causes: Orchitis - swollen, painful testicles in adult males (1 in 5). Sterility is rare unless both testicles are involved. Meningitis/encephalitis (1 in 200 - 5,000, mortality rate 1-2%) Pancreatitis (1 in 30) Deafness (6% incidence of unilateral hearing loss) Spontaneous abortion - infection during the first trimester of pregnancy can cause spontaneous abortion in up to 27% of cases.

Rubella ("German measles") is an illness in children and adults from which they usually recover. However, when contracted by a pregnant woman it can cause congenital rubella syndrome (CRS), the result of rubella virus infection in a developing foetus. CRS may result in spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, blindness, deafness, heart damage, and mental retardation. A woman contracting rubella infection in the first trimester of pregnancy has a 15-50% chance of having a severely affected child. The risk from CRS becomes negligible when maternal infection occurs after the 20th week of pregnancy

• 90 countries around the world use MMR including the USA, Australia, New Zealand and every EU country.
• More than 500 million MMR doses have been given world-wide since 1972.
• Since 1988 when MMR was introduced in the UK the number of children catching measles, mumps and rubella has fallen to an all-time low.
• No child has died of acute measles in the UK for more than a decade.
• In 1999 there were no cases of congenital rubella in the UK.
• A single dose of the MMR vaccine gives around 90% protection against measles and mumps and 95-99% against rubella. 99% of those who have a second dose are protected.
• In most years since its introduction MMR has been given to more than 90% of children.
• Severe adverse reactions to the MMR vaccine are very rare - about 1 in 100,000 immunisations. No child has died of such a reaction since MMR was introduced in 1988.

  UK Department of Health current vaccination guidelines

So what's the problem?

In 1998, Dr Andrew Wakefield described 12 children who had autism and bowel disease with onset after MMR vaccination. The authors concluded they had no evidence that the vaccine was responsible but this study was widely reported in the press, causing public concern and confusion. (Wakefield, AJ. et al. Lancet 1998, 351: 637-641). At a press conference Dr Wakefield suggested giving children the vaccines in three separate doses would be safer. This suggestion was not supported by his 12 co-authors nor by any scientific evidence. The number of cases of autism coming to clinical attention have risen in the last 20 years. This is believed to be partly due to better diagnosis of the condition. Criticisms of the original Lancet article are that:

1. The study used too few cases (12) to make any generalizations about the causes of autism. Further, the cases were selected by researchers and may not be representative of many cases of autism.
2. There were inadequate groups of control children. As a result, it is difficult to determine whether the bowel changes were similar to changes in normal children, or to determine if the rate of vaccination in autistic children was higher than in the general population.
3. The study did not identify the time period during which the cases were identified.
4. In at least 4 of the 12 cases described, behavioural problems appeared before the onset of symptoms of bowel disease; that is, the effect preceded the proposed cause. It is therefore unlikely that bowel disease or the MMR vaccine triggered the autism.

Subsequently, Dr Wakefield has been accused of a conflict of interest surrounding the publication of the Lancet paper. Many leading independent groups and researchers from around the world have examined the safety of MMR. Much of the research is available at: MMR: The Facts

More information on MMR and bad science from BadScience.

In all states of the USA, children are only allowed to attend school if they have had their vaccinations, including MMR. There is a 99% uptake in the USA by school entry. Finland and Sweden started MMR vaccination with the same vaccine as the USA in 1982, and have published studies that the programme is safe and effective. In the Republic of Ireland, the low uptake of MMR (74.4% in the Eastern Region area) resulted in an outbreak of 1,220 cases of measles with three deaths. In Japan, in 1993, they had problems with contamination of their own MMR vaccine and stopped the programme. They used single measles and rubella vaccines instead. Between 1994 and 1999, there were 85 deaths from measles - in this country there were no acute measles deaths in a decade. In the Netherlands a religious community that refuses vaccination recently had a measles epidemic of over 2,300 cases. Almost 20% had serious complications and 3 children died.

Measles, mumps and rubella - single vaccines

• There is no scientific evidence to support the safety or efficacy of giving M/M/R vaccination as three separate vaccines at defined intervals.
• Using separate vaccines would lessen the take-up of vaccination, increasing the risk of these diseases returning.
• No other country that recommends three single vaccines rather than MMR triple vaccine.
• Having separate vaccines means there are delays between the jabs - leaving children at risk of infection from measles, mumps and rubella.
• When the single measles vaccine was in use in the UK, there were regular measles epidemics, killing between 10-20 children each year.

Whooping Cough - a similar case

Concerns were raised in the mid-1970s about the safety of the DTP vaccine (diptheria, tetanus and pertussis) and in particular the pertussis (whooping cough) component. There were reports that it might cause brain damage, but these were proven to be unfounded some years later (in the early 1980s). In the meantime, however, parents were offered a choice of vaccines - with or without the pertussis component. Many (over 50%) opted for the vaccine without protection against pertussis. Because of this, many children caught pertussis, thousands were admitted to hospital and more than 100 died, in three separate epidemics.

Latest research into MMR vaccination

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