Rapid Responses to:
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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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MMR vaccine
- Penelope Elphinstone (30 October 2003)
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Re: MMR vaccine
- John Phillip Heptonstall (4 November 2003)
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Penelope Elphinstone, Principal in general practice Ampthill Square Medical Centre NW1 1DR
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The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine litigation is based on the central allegation that the vaccine causes autism. It shows the generosity of our legal aid system that £15 million of public money has been spent on the case even though there is no published evidence linking MMR and autism. In the context of a failing National Health Service is this prudent use of scarce public funds? The Legal Services Commission (LSC) withdrew funding because the litigation was "very likely to fail". The LSC has admitted in the national press (Daily Mail, 4 October 2003) that it was "mistaken" to have funded the case. It accords with a near zero success rate in legally aided pharmaceutical litigation in which the main beneficiaries are lawyers. It seems unlikely that the claimants will get any compensation so perhaps these monies might have been better spent on the children's need rather than on lawyers' fees. It is difficult to see what has been achieved by the huge public cost of this case apart from enriching lawyers and promoting the unsustainable belief that MMR causes autism. Penelope Elphinstone - General Practitioner Declaration: The author advises on clinical negligence cases for claimants and defendants. Competing interests: None declared |
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John Phillip Heptonstall, Director of The Morley Acupuncture Clinic and Complementary Therapy Centre Leeds LS27 8EG
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Sir Clearly the monies would have been better spent on furthering the excellent research by Wakefield, O'Leary and Singh; their works appear to be the most valuable and accurate pieces of evidence damning MMR vaccines to date, yet for some reason known only to government they are probably the most ignored by all the major published reviewers inclduing government scientists. I can only conclude that the government agenda does not correspond to its duty to its people - preferring to spend its peoples' monies in an increasingly overt manner controversially against the public will. If the LSC admit, as Penelope suggests, to making a hash of the decision to fund the 1000 cases, who in the LSC has answered for such a waste of public funds? If no one at the LSC answers for this, then one assumes the decisions were justifiable and what is another £4m, at this stage, to be spent on 1000 British children and their families who seek justice from their hard-earned taxes - £4000 per damaged family? It is but a drop in the ocean when compared to the £billions spent in the Gulf, £billions spent on vaccines which are likely to be proven unsafe despite the LSC move to block any further revellations about them in open court where evidence is weighed according to legal process (fortunately) and not scientific process which, as shown by the Meadow's Law fiasco, is not desigend to mediate between factions but is merely an aid to informing on those factions. The truth will out I have no doubt... Regards John H. Competing interests: None declared |
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