Little boy lost inside his own prison

(Sunday Express Jan 28, 2001)

"HI, hi, hi, hi," a little voice says down the phone, writes VICTORIA FLETCHER.

A large raspberry noise follows and then the receiver Is handed back to his mother.

"That was Stephan," Elaine Storey explains. "He’s a very happy boy, very bright. You can see that he wants to say so much."

Elaine, from Ashington in Northumberland, is one of thousands of parents whose children changed after the MMR.

Stephan is six years old. "Hi"--is almost the only word he can say since his development stopped aged two, just weeks after having the jab.

"It’s my fault. I didn’t know there could be problems. I shouldn’t have let him have it," Elaine explains. "I just want him to be secure in the future when his parents aren’t about."

Elaine, 46, has never talked about what happened and did not now the same thing had occurred to other children. At the time, doctors said it was just coincidence. But in private, they confided to her that MMR was probably to blame but they could not say it on the record.

"His speech totally stopped," Elaine explains. "He couldn’t make himself understood. His development just totally ended. It Is like he is lost inside a prison. It was so close to the MMR that I just wondered if there could be a connection."

The Sunday Express has -launched a campaign to call for the reintroduction of single immunisation and has highlighted the cases of a number of families who believe the jab caused side-effects, including autism.

These include Rory Adams, eight, who suffers from autism and an incurable bowel disease; toddler Holly Lewis who stopped breathing hours after the MMR and who has been confirmed as autistic, and 18-month-old Alex Haydock, who two weeks after his jab, started with diarrhoea, high temperatures and a rash. He is being assessed for autism.

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