Pandora's Box: Measles Vaccine Case Fuels Anti-Inoculation Hysteria

(MoneyWatch)  A U.K. vaccine compensation panel's award ?£90,000 to the family of a child who became disabled after receiving the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is being wrongly interpreted as evidence that vaccines aren't safe.

The award is rare, the condition is rare, the panel made it clear that the case was unique, not linked to autism, and that there was nothing more than a "temporal" connection between Robert Fletcher's brain damage and the jab. But all that is being ignored in favor of dubious ideas that will harm children.

To be clear: Not being innoculated against measles puts you at risk for brain damage. Yet the media has seized on the Fletcher decision as "evidence" that vaccines cause harm. Here are a few examples of how this one case is being blown out of proportion.

• The Birmingam Mail: "A LANDMARK judgement against the controversial MMR jab has given hope to a Birmingham father of two autistic sons. Jonathan Harris, aged 51, of Sheldon, said the ?£90,000 compensation awarded last week to a mother whose son suffered severe brain damage after receiving the vaccination would give credence to his own beliefs." Fact: The ruling has nothing to do with autism. Fletcher's injuries followed brain damage from seizures, and are non-autistic. Besides, vaccines and autism are not linked.
• Wigan Today: "THE claim that the MMR vaccine is totally safe was in doubt again today after a landmark ruling for the Wigan boy who started the whole controversy of triple jab side-effects." Fact: This is a single case. On its own it says nothing about the MMR vaccine as a whole. Despite tens of millions of people receiving the vaccine, the Fletcher case is the first and only case in which compensation has been awarded.
• Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, of the U.K. government's Commons Health Committee, said: "It is fair to assume that there could be as many as thousands of children and parents in the same position." Fact: It's completely unfair to assume from one case that there are "thousands" like it. Fletcher was initially diagnosed with simple febrile convulsions. The risk of that from measles vaccine is vanishingly low, and similar to the risk of seizures if you don't have the vaccine.
• The panel ruled: "The seizure occurred ten days after the vaccination. In our view, this cannot be put down to coincidence. It is this temporal association that provides the link." Fact: "Temporal association" literally means "occurred at the same time as," or coincidence. Just because two things happen together doesn't mean they're connected. Otherwise, we'd have to conclude that the U.S. lost its World Cup game against Ghana because you wore different colored socks than on the days the U.S. won or drew its group-stage games.
• Campaigner Polly Tommey, who edits The Autism File and believes her son Billy is autistic because of MMR, says: "This is fantastic news. Now doctors can't tell me that the MMR is safe." Fact: Telling parents that vaccines aren't safe is the equivalent of child abuse because it literally exposes unvaccinated children to crippling or fatal diseases. Due to vaccine-autism hysteria, the U.K. now has one of the highest rates of kids with measles. Measles! A disease that was eradicated in the 1960s, but since 2002 has been making a comeback. Go ahead and click on the image above for a larger view of what measles looks like, it's not pleasant. Only half of certain groups of children in the state of Georgia are fully covered for measles due to bogus vaccine fears.

And finally: Award yourself a brownie point if you noticed that Fletcher's mom, Jackie, is an anti-vaccine campaigner.

Related:

• Attack on Autism Critic's "Secret" Father Doesn't Stand Up to Scrutiny
• Autism Doctor Loses His Medical License; Now Let's Talk About How False Vaccine Beliefs Hurt Kids
• The Hidden Autism Agenda Behind the Vaccine Case Headed for the Supreme Court
• How Misinformation Gets the Jump on Facts in the Vaccine Wars
• Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy's "Historic" Study of Vaccines and Autism in Monkeys? Ah -- Never Mind.

Image by Flickr user Julien Harneis, CC.