Immunisation

I'm the leader with a kids' group, as a volunteer. I've been doing that for a number of years and over the course of that time I've seen a lot of, not a lot, but a few, fair few children with autistic spectrum disorders, invariably boys. Which I think was why I was especially concerned because obviously I had a son.   

So for me the decision was never not to vaccinate or not, it was a decision between triple jabs or single jabs. And I guess I just felt I really needed to be informed. Because you know that the GPs are going to tell you that it's, the right thing to do is to have the triple jab. Because that's what they have to do. And I just wanted some sort of more impartial view. So again we're lucky, we had another friend who's a hospital doctor. And he pointed me in the direction of a paper, which had been written. It's from Drugs and Therapeutics Bulletin, volume 41, number 4, April 2003, page 25. And it says at the top, 'The independent review from the consumers' association'. I'm not sure which consumers' association. But what it is, is a review of a lot of studies that have been done, looking for links between MMR and autism. 

And I read this and to summarise, one of the things it says is that autism has increased, or recorded incidences of autism have increased, you know, over the last ten or twenty years. The sort of line of autism has gone up like this. But at the time that the MMR jab was introduced, which I think was 1988, you might have expected the rate of increase to suddenly spike upwards like that. But the gist of this paper was that, although it was increasing, it would, wasn't increasing any more because of the MMR jabs. And it also suggested that there wasn't any link between numbers of people who reported autism whether they'd been vaccinated or not vaccinated. Again there didn't seem to be any connection. It seemed equally likely that you would report development of autism if you hadn't been vaccinated. So on the basis of this I think I tried to engage my scientific brain and think, 'Okay, you know, these are independent people. They haven't got a particular axe to grind here'. There are further risks associated with the single jabs, because your child is not immunised for a longer period of time and is therefore in slightly more danger themselves, but also posing a slightly greater risk to the rest of the population, particularly babies who haven't been immunised because they're younger. So with a slightly heavy heart I thought I'd go for the triple jab. If I hadn't read this, I'm not entirely sure what I would have done actually. But this was sufficient for me to make my mind up.
 

The underlying piece of evidence I was told was basically they took files from autistic, they were looking at, at trying to find links between autistic children and looked at everything they had in common. And one of the things that they all had in common was MMR. Which was inevitable because at the time everybody was being vaccinated with it. But it didn't, to me that doesn't justify any kind of cause, link. I mean it was probably something worth investigating just like wheat and hamburgers over, you know, a certain period of time, but it doesn't, in no way does it, you know, was it conclusive for me at all. It didn't allay necessarily other fears but it was, you know, basically wasn't enough for me to feel that it was, you know, a strong piece of research to support any, a problem with it.
 

We were just, in just such a state. I couldn't tell you how worried we were. I think it's being older parents as well. And with her already having the bowel problems and being such a sickly little girl that, anyway it was done.  

She'd be, sickness and diarrhoea, like viruses, anything that was, well, it didn't really have to be about, she would just get these infections. It's as if she was really, her immune system was really weak and we didn't know the reason behind it. In fact a couple of times when she was small, when she was a baby, she was hospitalised because of them.

But altogether she just seemed to be always poorly. And then when she was about 18 months she started becoming really constipated, badly. I mean she would go like 10 to 14 days and when she did finally go it was just murder, she would scream. It's just something I never want to see again. We had to use suppositories on her, and again she was under the hospital for that, under a specialist. And it was just terrible. So it was just those kind of things really, constant infections of her, of her, you know, her system, and tummy viruses, tummy bugs and things like that.

And at that age she was coming up to having the MMR?

Well, yes, because she was like 13 months and there was just no way we would consider, well, she was never really well enough to have it. It was just one thing after another, you know, she'd be, like I said I'd be at work and I'd be off all the time, and they were very good. But that's just the way she was.  

And it worried me because of us, of us, being older, we thought maybe, because I was 40 when I had Ellie and I thought it, I, yes, I thought with me being 40 I might, it might be that that's made her so weak in, in her resistance to anything. But as I said, you know, as time went on and we were worrying about the MMR, and she was 2' when we finally did give, give it to her, or get, you know, allow her to have it done. But there'd been a lot of anguish before that, leading up to that. And it was unnecessary, looking back now, it was unnecessary.  
 

Our youngest son had an allergic reaction, I can't remember what age he was, but quite a severe allergic reaction, and we took him to the doctor. They identified it as an allergic reaction. And then he went to hospital to have some blood tests done, one of the results of which was that he was allergic, mildly allergic to egg white. They're still, he's still in the process of having further blood tests taken, and we haven't received the results yet of those, to find out whether he's allergic to anything else, and there's been a broader spectrum of allergies that have been tested. And because he's allergic to egg white, in which the vaccines are cultured, they, the medical staff felt that it was safer for him to have his jabs in a controlled environment in case he had an allergic reaction, so that he could be taken care of quickly and effectively. And so we took him to hospital. He had his MMR jab and was absolutely fine. Had absolutely no reaction whatsoever to it, not even a slightly swollen leg or any, you know, anything at all, he was absolutely fine. But he will be having his MMR booster in hospital as well, just to make sure that he's okay.