British Government Minister in Idiotic Deception Over MMR

by John Stone

http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/04/-british-government-minister-in-idiotic-deception-over-mmr.html

Dawn Primarolo, the UK government minister who surreptitiously signed responsibility for government vaccine policy to an unelected pharma controlled body – the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation - in January, has been caught trying to deceive Parliament. In a written answer to Conservative MP Mark Pritchard on 18 March she denied that the Bailey Banks case – recently awarded in the US vaccine court had anything to do with autism. She told Pritchard:

“In 2007 the United States Court of Federal Claims made a ruling in favour of compensation to the father of Bailey Banks for his non-autistic developmental delay as a result of Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM) following receipt of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. ADEM is an extremely rare condition that has been reported after rabies, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, smallpox, MMR, Japanese B encephalitis, pertussis, influenza and hepatitis B vaccines. The Bailey Banks case has no implications for MMR vaccine policy." HERE

Primarolo, or her advisors, seem to have lighted on the term “non-autistic development delay” amongst the key-words created for indexing purposes, at the top of the Bailey Banks adjudication. However, the formula, which does not seem to have clinical precedent does not derive from Special Master Abell’s judgement at all. He states unequivocally (p.27):

"Furthermore, Bailey’s ADEM was severe enough to cause lasting,residual damage, and retarded his developmental progress, which fits under the generalized heading of Pervasive Developmental Delay, or PDD. The Court found that Bailey would not have suffered this delay but for the administration of the MMR vaccine, and that this chain of causation was not too remote, but was rather a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay." HERE

It is quite clear from Abell’s extended and detailed discussion that the document should have been headed not with the key-word, put in by some bureaucrat, ‘non-autistic development delay’ but ‘pervasive development delay/disorder’ (PDD) or ‘pervasive development delay/disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS).

It should be added that since the UK Department of Health systematically disregards all adverse vaccine reactions Primarolo can have no real idea over the true incidence of ADEM. A child in the UK suffering an adverse reaction to vaccine is far more like to suffer from medical denials and neglect than be offered an MRI scan like Bailey Banks. For instance, for at least the last five years a National Health Service website has given the following advice regarding “severe” adverse reactions to MMR:

Q: "My son had a sever(e) reaction to the first MMR jab. Does this mean that he is well protected from these diseases, or is a second dose still necessary?"

A: "If a child has responded to all the components of the vaccine the first time, he will not have a problem being exposed to the viruses again. It's like any one of us who is already immune meeting someone with the disease - the infection can't get established.

"If he hasn't made protection to all three diseases after the first time, then he would still be susceptible to those natural infections, and still needs the 2nd dose.

"Reactions after the 2nd dose are essentially the same as after the 1st dose, but if they do occur they are even rarer. There are no new side effects after the 2nd dose that do not occur after the 1st dose. The advice is therefore that it is safe for your child to have the 2nd dose in order that he is properly protected." HERE

So, it is of no concern to the UK National Health Service that this child had a severe adverse reaction to the vaccine, their only concern – against all medical ethics or good sense – is that he should be re-vaccinated, AND NOTHING IS RECORDED, MONITORED OR INVESTIGATED.

Plainly, Primarolo’s statement goes beyond the routinely misleading and dishonest answers you expect from British government ministers, and suggests the UK Department of Health is now firmly backed into a corner. I can only urge all British readers to write their Members of Parliament to make their feelings and opinions known – you can find out who your MP is, and where to write to them HERE.

John Stone, based in London, is a Contributing Editor to Age of Autism.

Comments

Basically this is a diagnosis which could run for many of our children, who like Bailey have autistic symptoms but are not classically autistic. He certainly had - according to symptoms discussed in the judgment - an Autistic Spectrum type Disorder.

For instance, in this N. London study of 567 children, 278 were considered to have 'childhood autism' (based on records), 195 had 'atypical autism', and 94 were 'Asperger'.

http://adc.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/88/8/666

I suspect that breakdown is fairly arbitrary between 'childhood autism' and 'atypical', and the records would have been completely inadequate based on our experience. Our son would probably have been in first group according to the records, but the second group according to actual symptoms and the records would not have indicated that he was regressive - which he certainly was. The study goes on about recall bias which is more plausibly recording bias. But - to get back to the point the 'atypical' category is what we would be talking about in relation to PDD-NOS, and would normally be included in population estimates for autism in the UK. And, I suspect, that the more attentive the diagnosis is, the less likely it is that the child would be placed in the 'classical' or 'childhood' category. Frankly, I don't think we got much more than a labelling exercise.

Hmmm... Last time I checked, the DSM-IV listed five types of Pervasive Developmental Disorders under Pervasive Developmental Disorders.
Autism
Asperger's Syndrome
Childhood Disintigrative Disorder
Rett's Syndrome
and what was that 5th one??? Oh yeh...
Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified!
 
"Government attorneys for HHS have argued that PDD-NOS is "not autism"."

PDD-NOS can regress into autism. Happened to my son and the school saw it and changed the diagnosis. It was devastating for us. Bottomline, people are not stupid. This lying, hiding subterfuge is going to completely tank the vaccine program. Waiting for that to happen with bated breath. There is a subset of kids who should never be vaccinated and we are it.

John-- you remind me that Dr. Thomas Szasz describes certain diagnoses as "semantic blackjacks".

PDD-NOS is a blackjack when it comes to insurance exclusion, exclusion from many private schools, abuse and segregation in many public schools, targeting for heavy psych drug treatments, etc. It can't suddenly become a tickle stick for the sake of politics. As Allison Edwards put it, these authorities tell "a lot of porkies".

Gatogorra

Yes, the only refuge they have now is semantic confusion.

John

With regard to the incidence of ADEM we have now located a response from Dawn Primarolo which highlights in comic terms the UK Department of Health's slackness and negligence in monitoring adverse reactions to vaccine and their sequelae:

Mark Pritchard: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department is taking to monitor the incidence of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis after vaccination. [268385]

Dawn Primarolo: Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM) is an extremely rare neurological condition thought to be caused by a range of viral infections. Although ADEM has been reported in temporal association with several vaccines, there is a lack of good scientific evidence to show that routine vaccination is causally-associated with ADEM.

As with all pharmaceutical products used in the United Kingdom, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) keeps the safety of vaccines under close review. This includes monitoring reports of suspected adverse reactions (ADRs), spontaneously provided by health professionals and patients through the ‘Yellow Card Scheme’. Since 1968, the MHRA has received 10 Yellow Card reports of suspected ADEM in association with vaccinations given in the UK (see following table). Many millions of people have been exposed to these vaccines over this time period and the benefits far outweigh the risks.

It is important to bear in mind that reports submitted via the ‘Yellow Card Scheme’ relate only to suspicions that a vaccine or medicine may have caused a medical condition. Reports may also relate to coincidental events due to underlying or undiagnosed illness. Such reports are therefore not proof of a causal association. It is also not possible to ascertain the number of people who may have suffered an adverse event following vaccination using data from the Yellow Card Scheme. This is because reporting is voluntary and the level of under-reporting is unknown. For these reasons, it is not possible to assess the number of cases of ADEM following vaccination using the Yellow Card Scheme.

(A table follows listing the 10 cases)

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090402/text/90402w0046.htm

In other words, they haven't a clue.
 

John

Last year I did write to my local MP, Colin Challen (Labour), asking him to look into possible MMR/vaccine problems citing various pieces of the literature and relevant data from the CHA website. Challen merely forwarded this to Dawn Primarolo, without comment to me, who responded to him with a relatively simple response to the effect that the UK supports vaccinations, that MMR does not contain thimerosal (which I knew and had not associated the two together), that thimerosal had been shown to offer no problems and had been removed from vaccines, that the US IOM and European bodies deemed vaccines safe etc. He passed that to me. I wrote again to Colin Challen, adding additional data including the Poling case, and rebutted some of Dawn Primarolo's original response. I received the same proforma Primarolo had sent before, which her department had obbviously sent again to Challen and he sent to me without comment. I am in the process of preparing an enhanced version to see if I can get any real sense of responsibility or interest to public questioning from my local MP or the UK's most significant health department politician, third time lucky?

John

Another astonishing piece of investigation.

It is high time British politicians of influence were made to explain the warped thinking behind vaccine promoting leaflets. Dawn Primarolo, as Minister responsible for this codswallop should also be held to account for telling porkies to MP Mark Pritchard.

And I thought things were bad here -- but wait, we had the same thing happen just weeks ago!

The naysayers of the wackosphere along with other anonymous posters did their usual, denial dance, singing their usual tune, that the wording of these court cases is not autism,but autism-like...or PDD, but not autism, though PDD is included in that dang DSM under autism....so they're screwed again with their nonsense rationale...oh well.

Dawn Primarolo and the entire UK Department of Health might as well be joining the ranks of the other merry denialists here is the USA. Here's where that quote from Upton Sinclair fits in - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Keep up the pressure as Baily Banks could be the UK Hannah Poling case. I hope some media decides that the health and future of the children there is more important than denying and closing eyes and ears to the truth.
 

John,

Another excellent report. I'm beginning to see the US and UK as simply distant versions of the same corporate country.

Government attorneys for HHS have argued that PDD-NOS is "not autism". We heard from our attorneys that this was the remark made about our son's vaccine injury case, which the government attorneys tried to disclude (the case was "tabled" for later consideration in the end). British government officials and "vaccine court" defense attorneys seem to be the only people on the planet who think that PDD-NOS is something other than autism. How nice for them.