House of Commons Hansard Debates for 16 Jul 1997 (pt 13)

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I hope that hon. Members will have noted the difficulty in half-hour Adjournment debates secured by one Member: interventions may prevent a full reply from the Minister.

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Measles Vaccines

1 pm

Mr. Llew Smith (Blaenau Gwent): Jonathan Swift once said:

"Falsehood flies, and Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceived, it is too late, the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect".

How true that was and will be, as evidence is increasingly uncovered highlighting the potential implications of the rising incidence of autism and Crohn's disease in children, and the uptake of the mumps, measles and rubella and the measles and rubella vaccines. Indeed, the evidence shows that it is the cocktail of vaccinations that is likely to be the cause of the unexpected problem.

In the past two years, I have tabled dozens of questions and was granted an Adjournment debate on problems relating to measles and rubella vaccinations--problems ranging from lack of adequate information to parents and the possible side effects of the vaccinations to the damage itself. Over that period, I have become increasingly critical of the procedures and the side effects on some children from those vaccinations, but even my cynicism was stretched to breaking point when I read that in the latter part of the 1950s in the United States, and in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s, Down's syndrome children were used as guinea pigs in tests involving live measles vaccines. At that time, those living in the institutions concerned were described as "sub-normal".

Those tests were recently brought to the public's attention as a result of an article in The Sunday Telegraph by Victoria Macdonald, highlighting much of the research by solicitor Richard Barr and consultant Dr. Andrew Wakefield. In the past couple of weeks, articles in the Irish Independent also raised the issue. Their author, Brian McDonald, reported:

"Children, some of whom were either mentally or physically handicapped, were used in drug trials carried out in Irish orphanages over twenty years ago."

Some people, while deploring what happened in the 1950s and 1960s, may attempt to justify it on the basis that at that time we knew no better, but that is not a satisfactory explanation. For instance, Dr. Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, stated:

"People try to say that you cannot apply the same ethical standards today as you could in 1960. You have to do the research with the proper safeguards in place and the safeguards were there in 1960, but it was largely ignored by the doctors."

Dr. Wakefield of the Royal Free hospital stated:

"this is both a practical and ethical issue. You cannot extrapolate from brain damaged children to normal infants."

The response by Jackie Fletcher, who set up the national organisation JABS--Justice Awareness and Basic Support--when her child was severely brain-damaged after one of these vaccinations, said:

"The more I go into this, the more horrific it becomes".

We should be horrified, because, as Victoria Macdonald stated in her article:

"babies and young children with Down's Syndrome were used as guinea pigs by British doctors in 1960 to test an experimental vaccine for measles . . . children who were living in institutions for the 'severely subnormal' (as they were then described) were

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subjected to the experiments because the doctor said it was 'useful' having them in hospital where they could watch over them for adverse reactions."

She went on to state:

"one of the children died seven days after being vaccinated from a common side effect of measles, but the doctors described it as coincidental in their reports."

From an ethical point of view, tests such as those carried out in the UK in 1960 on Down's syndrome children--some of the most vulnerable people in our community--should never have taken place, because those children did not have the ability to say no. Because of their mental condition, they were passive recipients of the tests or anything else one wished to inflict on them. If we are to be worthy of the description "civilised", we can never condone those acts; otherwise, we debase our humanity. We hear of other instances, where people with severe learning difficulties have been taken advantage of; we have rightly condemned those acts and must continue to condemn them, but we must also ensure that we learn from our mistakes.

On the practical side, Dr. Wakefield argues that there are several factors which make that population

"entirely inappropriate for studies designed to detect adverse neurological events to measles vaccine."

He states:

"The susceptibility of the damaged brain to acute and delayed adverse events to measles or measles vaccine is unknown, although this may be altered when compared with the normal brain."

It was inappropriate and potentially hazardous, therefore, to extrapolate from that series of studies that the vaccines would be safe for the general population. The period of observation was limited to three weeks maximum in any one study, which is far too short a time either to detect or to exclude all adverse effects on the central nervous system.

The question we have to ask is what lessons have we have learnt from the mistakes of the early trials. The inadequacy of the three-week safety trials, particularly in relation to children with Crohn's disease, is highlighted by Dr. Wakefield, who states that there may be a diagnostic delay of up to two years. Indeed, he goes on to say that there

"have been no prospective studies of measles vaccine safety beyond the initial 3-4 weeks follow up period . . . Beyond this time, safety was assumed. It is notable that trial cohorts from 1964 continue to be monitored for vaccine efficacy 31 years later. It is also notable that in 1995 it was possible to use the same trial cohort to examine a possible link between measles vaccines and inflammatory bowel disease."

Those points were also made by Thompson writing in The Lancet in 1995.

Mr. Don Touhig (Islwyn): As my hon. Friend knows, I have some knowledge of the problem of Crohn's disease, as my eldest daughter has been a sufferer for the past 10 or 11 years. Will my hon. Friend comment on the case of David Lawrence, a young constituent of mine who had a measles vaccination in 1994 and became very ill with a serious virus about 10 days later? Over the past two years, he has gone from being a healthy, fit young lad to a weak and sickly young lad. Three weeks ago, he

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was diagnosed as having Crohn's disease. His family are convinced that all his medical problems stem from that vaccination.

Mr. Smith: Solicitors and consultants involved with this work have received hundreds of similar complaints about children who have ended up with either Crohn's disease or autism. What saddens me is the response of the medical profession, which more often than not implies that there is no relationship between the vaccination and autism or Crohn's disease. People in the profession often say, "These are merely scare stories," but the example that my hon. Friend has given is repeated in my constituency. Within an hour of the measles vaccination, a young girl became seriously ill, and a couple of years later she is having treatment for autism and Crohn's disease. There are not just one or two cases: there are hundreds of cases.

Vaccine experts state:

"standard dose 'further attenuated' measles vaccines are among the safest vaccines in use today".

Although the implication of that statement is that live measles vaccines are safe, it is of course relative and meaningless if safety trials of other vaccines were as inadequate as those conducted on measles vaccines.

No one denies the benefits of vaccinations, but what about the risks? Vaccines should be safe. The children are not ill; they do not have any disease when they are vaccinated. Vaccines are given as a preventive measure. The only acceptable side effects of a vaccine are those which produce no long-term damage. More than 800 families have now contacted solicitors or support groups in the belief that their children have been seriously damaged by vaccines in the same way as the child referred to by my hon. Friend.

It is worth noting that Crohn's disease among children was unheard of 15 to 20 years ago. What safeguards were in place to monitor the risks of two-dose vaccine schedules, which had been highlighted as of particular concern to international measles virus experts in the early 1990s? There was none--safety was assumed on the basis that certain Scandinavian countries, such as Sweden, had been administering two doses of measles vaccine for some years. But had Sweden or any other Scandinavian country ever conducted any safety trials of two-dose measles or measles, mumps and rubella vaccines? No, they had not.

We cannot make assumptions about the safety of the administration of, or exposure to, live biological agents. How many times in recent years have we been reminded of that fact, whether it be in relation to the Gulf war, BSE or E. coli? The chief medical officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, claimed in the Daily Telegraph on 5 December 1996 that Britons were dangerously blase about disease. Unfortunately, the assumptions made by his Department about the safety of a second dose of measles vaccine show that the Department was equally blase.

The Department of Health claimed that the procedure was safe because it had been given to millions of children world wide. That is not a qualification of safety. Thalidomide was given to thousands of women, but that did not make it safe. Dr. David Salisbury, principal medical officer for vaccines, had ample warning of potential problems as early as 1992. Indeed, these points have been made on many occasions to officials at the Department of Health. Unfortunately, I suspect that those who were advising the previous Government are now advising the Labour Government.

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We should contrast the Government's policy on reviewing the possible negative health effects of the MMR vaccination campaign on some children with the rapid way in which Ministers have rightly intervened to support the alleged victims of Gulf war syndrome.

The previous Government tried to deny and then to avoid all responsibility for Gulf war syndrome. Yet when it comes to initiating a widespread review or reassessment of the MMR-MR vaccination campaign, Labour Ministers are sticking to the same policy reassurances as their Conservative predecessors. For example, in 1995 Tom Sackville, the then Conservative Minister, said in a written answer to me:

"There is already a well-established satisfactory system in place for monitoring adverse reactions to all medicines, including vaccines.--[Official Report, 6 November 1996; Vol. 265, c. 610.]

More recently--on 22 May--in a written question I asked the Secretary of State for Health whether he would