MMR - the public relations strategy
The proposals, reported today, to make MMR jabs compulsory show how worried some public health professionals are about the number of young children who are not being given the injections.
As the BBC has reported, documents we received under freedom of information revealed how the London Strategic Health Authority was so concerned that it raised the possibility of compulsory vaccination with the Department of Health.
The sensitivity of this issue is demonstrated by another document we have obtained through FOI.
This is a brief from the Department of Health and Central Office of information for a public relations contract worth between £300,000 and £400,000 to promote the MMR vaccine.
The brief states: "A high profile advertising campaign would not be the right way forward at this stage. It may run the risk of bringing the controversy and debate back into the headlines - igniting a media debate and giving further voice to those opposed to MMR. From research and past experience we know that one of the best strategies for reassuring parents is to keep MMR out of the headlines."
The document illustrates well the difficulties faced by the Department of Health in its campaign to maximise the take-up of the vaccine.
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If you look at the whole picture of health, it is quite evident that minor and not so minor immune problems, including autoimmune diseases are increasing. It is possible to speculate on causes - industrial pollution, pesticides, stress, immunisations - low level background multifactorial causes are probable, but also probably unprovable. And recent research seems to point to a 2-generation jump... due to the formation of eggs in a woman's body while she is still a foetus inside her mother. I am uncertain as to the balance of benefit. Before we were able to make these interventions, there was no difficulty. Some people died, others didn't. Maybe too many people died, but there was certainly a far more healthy public attitude towards death - and therefore towards the value of life. I don't think that anybody has really got to grips with the ethical and societal barrel of worms that modern medicine - and its power to postpone death - presents us with.
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Prevention is always best. Individual choice versus governmental direction is about the role of government and social responsibility when living in a world with mega-cities and the potential for the spread of disease. Education is always better than forced compliance. I would like to note that I think there is a difference between education and public relations, one if to encourage a behavior and the other is shield public agencies from failed education efforts.
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For those of us a bit older, "history" has something to tell us. When the single measles vaccines came out, there was the odd news story about children getting sick, but there weren't very many. The up-take of the single vaccine wasn't very good though, because parents realised, even back then, that in comparison to measles in the "rickets" days of 1920's and 1930's, serious complications to measles were primarily in immunodeficient, and the lower socio-economic classes, or those with nutritional (information and money) poverty.
The single measles vaccine wasn't seen as a huge problem. Then along came MMR, and it was after that that parents started to complain shrilly, in ever larger numbers.
What would be very interesting, would be to compare the complaints about problems after MMR with those after single measles. For the last 10 years, thousands of parents have opted for single measles shots. It should be easy enough to canvas all those parents and find out if the problems that they have, is identical to the problems seen after MMR.
Given that autism is around 1 per 60 according to Cohen, the results should speak for themselves. It's easy to see why science concentrates only on looking at antibodies in children, but never what happens in children who have problems after vaccination.
Two studies in May 2009 say that MMR has a 99.8% protection rate. If this is true, then making vaccination compulsory to go to school should be moot. If the vaccine lives up to the May 2009 studies, the vaccinated are protected.
To make vaccination compulsory, just reinforced the very real, understood chasm between the science and actuality.
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Hello Martin. Thanks. I have dropped in once or twice but I sighed too much. lol
It was the mention of the Greenman in a programme on Beowulf on BBC Four last night. How long ago was that? Remittance Man etc?
MMR - I an NOT a parent but my memory of all the jabs given to me as a child - whilst unpleasant - was I was told for the good of us all. I had a fairly bad reaction to one on my upper left arm but I got over it.
I have suggested before that too many parents took the provably very few tragic cases of innoculations "personally" - quite understandably. But that perhaps built up into a number too large to make sense and we have a problem?
Wasn't there also a high profile medical gainsayer? That is something else those parents with doubts may naturally have gravitated towards
I hope parents examine to pros and cons just as carefully but do not fixate on the cons. Yes. As a non parent that is easy for me to say - you MAY say?
You will never know how wrong you are. lol
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I read in my paper today that Richard Thomas leaves his Information Commissioners post at the end of the month?
I thought there was some unfinsished business that required HIM being there - allegedly?
We get some good results? How about that? Outwrestles eh? lol
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"If the vaccine lives up to the May 2009 studies, the vaccinated are protected. "
This is only correct if viruses didn't mutate.
But they do.
So you have the non-immune carriers with a gene pool that the virus must adapt to to survive. That adaption being done by mutation either from replication, gene transfer or host biology changes.
And if a significant portion remain unimunised, those mutations carry on and there will be a mutation that isn't close enough to the vaccine and a new pool of hosts (the MMR vaccinated) will be made available.
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