Sasaferrato said:
Funny how things turn out. There is an epidemic of mumps amongst late teenagers beecause, in spite of two doses, MMR has proved not to be terribly effective.
Vaccination is not always particularly effective at the individual level. In such cases, vaccination programmes require "herd immunity" to be effective. It depends on how infectious the disease is, but typically well over 90% of the population must be vaccinated to prevent large outbreaks. The reduction in uptake of MMR since Andrew Wakefield managed to get his tiny uncontrolled study published is therefore likely to be responsible for the outbreak of mumps, and various (thankfully localised) outbreaks of measles.
Whilst we are at it, could someone explain the eightfold rise in autism in Scotland since MMR was introduced?
Various explanations have been proposed, including the already-mentioned changes in diagnostic criteria, which I think is likely to be one of the more important factors.
I think you probably mean an 8-fold rise in the specific type of autism that Andrew Wakefield associated with remnants of the measles vaccine found in bowel tissue of affected children (never actually directly to MMR - that's pure speculation and pre-conceived bias on his part) rather than an 8-fold rise in all autisms, but you haven't provided a link so I can't check what you actually meant. An 8-fold rise in a very rare and relatively recently described disease which would previously have had a different diagnostic label is not particularly spectacular. The rise in incidence of this form of autism is similar across the West, despite marked differences in year of introduction and uptake of MMR in different countries, which suggests that any apparent association is an example of the
ecological fallacy.
It's also worth mentioning that the profoundly disabling effects that measles can have for young children are both much more serious and much more common than the form of autism claimed to be caused by MMR. Mumps in adults is also a very serious disease (much more so than for children), often leading to permanent infertility in men. German measles (the third disease that MMR protects against) causes profound disability in unborn children should their mothers become infected while pregnant. A few decades ago it was realised that immunising teenage girls was insufficient to prevent them catching the disease (due to the lack of herd immunity), and so now we vaccinate both sexes at a much younger age.
MMR is more effective than single vaccines because - if you belief Wakefield's unscientific and irresponsible nonsense - there is no point giving them all at the same time (otherwise it's just MMR), which massively prolongs the window of time during which children (and therefore all of us) remain unprotected. Furthermore, multiple vaccinations given over a long period of time mean that jabs are more likely to be missed or forgotten, and this problem is compounded by the need for multiple booster jabs which are also more likely to be missed.
Even if Wakefield is 100% correct, far far less disability is caused by using MMR than any other strategy. Personally, having reviewed his research and some of the work which followed it, I believe he's wrong, very wrong. If his hypothesis continues to be successful in reducing uptake rates of MMR, he may well end up doing more damage to more children than any other doctor in history. And, just to reiterate, the last sentence is true
even if he's 100% right about a link.
Apologies for derail.
You deny your own masters!
