Let this be a tragic warning to parents everywhere, despite major advances in medicine, kids can still die of diseases that most people today think have been eradicated. Have your kids vaccinated for their sake.

Death from measles, TB, what next rabies. Britain is becoming infested once again.

To put the record straight:
"According to the Communicable Disease Report, a weekly bulletin for health professionals, the youngster was suffering from an "underlying lung condition and was taking immunosuppressive drugs" when struck down with measles." There may have been very good medical reasons for parents of a boy with his condition and immune status to omit a measles containing vaccine. The combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and its individual components are made from live attenuated viruses and the vaccine manufacturers' information sheets specify that live vaccines should not be given to anyone with a compromised immune system. Before anyone tries to lay a guilt trip on the boy's parents let us not try to second guess their motives without all the information.

The MMR controversy began in September1992 when the then Chief Medical Officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, announced the withdrawal of two of the three brands of MMR vaccine because they were causing mumps meningitis. Parents whose children had suffered severe neurological problems started to raise the issue and MMR uptake began to fall slowly but surely from 1994.

Over the past twelve years our group has been contacted by thousands of families, keen to vaccinate, but concerned about the safety of the MMR vaccine because of personal experience. They want to protect their children but in a way that suits their children's needs. Many have opted to pay for single dose measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. When the Department of Health tracks statistics on the fall in uptake of MMR vaccines it is doubtful whether the figures for single dose vaccines are fully included in the calculations.

"A boy in Greater Manchester has become the first person in Britain to die from measles for 14 years." We beleive that the Department of Health vaccine chiefs should be equally concerned about the 26 children believed to have died following MMR combinations since their introduction in 1988 (some of these children have received the Government's vaccine damage payment). Clearly a case of double standards.

Death rates for measles were in decline by 95 per cent BEFORE any measles vaccine had been introduced. Vaccination played no role in the decline of deaths and complications. From the mid 1800s to mid 1900s many changes took place as regards to improved living conditions, sanitation, clean water supply and better nutrition. These factors are the main reasons for all the huge declines in disease, complications and deaths. A healthy child will not die of complications of illnesses such as measles, indeed they will not even have complications. With this recent case the boy was clearly not healthy. and was also on immune-suppressive drugs. We need to know the full medical history of these cases before we can truly comment and those who advocate that more vaccinations are the answer need to start researching the subject properly! These sad cases should not be used as propaganda to promote MMR.

Measles death rate had declined by 99.4% before vaccination. All the evidence to show vaccination is ineffective and unsafe is on this UK website: http://www.vaccination.org.uk
john scudamore

Although this is a tragedy for the boy and his family the MMR would have been precluded medically for the boy due to his condition.

A death from measles is likely to be used by the medical profession to strike more fear into young parents, deaths from measles pale to insignificance when compared to the likely toll of death and destruction of families and their childrens' health through MMR induced debility such as autism (strong evidence of link with MMR despite government attempts to limit the role that evidence plays through the use of poor quality epidemiology) and other chronic cognitive deficit disorders rampaging through our schools and communities since the introduction of MMR.

Although children and adults do not die of autism, the disorder involves for example a high rate of epilepsy and autistic children and adults die of epilepsy - I know of several.

It would appear that measles was not eradicated by MMR any more than smallpox was eradicated by Jenner's vaccine - look at the historical evidence and statistics - vaccines play little part in eradication of disease; one probability is that they shift a disease from one obvious state into another - perhaps less obvious (although try to get a medical person to admit this 'tranference' even if it is pretty obvious) - state of disease, examples for which evidence exists are Hepatitis B vaccine and MS, ME; Polio vaccine and ME: Hib vaccine and childhood diabetes; DTP vaccine and asthma, cot death, infantile spasms; MMR and epilepsy; MMR and meningitis.

I recently heard there may be more disturbing news about vaccines that people ought to seek confirmation of as, if true, it will impact on all children close to receiving vaccines - that anaphylaxis to vaccines may be causing more serious events than the diseases themselves.

The department of health, if this is true, should come clean on this...one wonders if that department, which has been responsible for the situation by continually striving to clear any vaccine of a bad name with often poor epidemiology that has been contested by eminent scientistst, might come clean/be allowed to come clean on what would be quite an explosive issue for government and the pharmaceutical industry its department officials work so closely with?

Regards

John H.

There is a fundamental mis-understanding of the point of vaccination. Vaccination protects the individial but it also IMPORTANTLY provides herd immunity - it stops the transmission through the community, erradicating the disease and protecting those that cannot be vaccinated.

With vaccination rates dropping incidence of measles will increase. With more cases there will be a higher number of serious cases and deaths.

With vaccination rates in the communicty low it is even more important to vaccinate your own child