government office block above
the Elephant and Castle shopping centre, 15 health officials
and experts settled down for the meeting eight months before the MMR programme
was rolled out nationwide in the UK in 1988.
Sir John Badenoch, chairman of the “working party on the introduction
of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine”, called the meeting to order.
“The chairman reminded those present that the proceedings of the working
party were confidential,” record the minutes of the meeting.
But we are able to reveal what happened at that crucial meeting on
11 February 1988 – and the minutes of other meetings of Whitehall committees
dealing with the triple-vaccine – thanks to the freedom of information
act (FOIA).
And these minutes provide a unique insight into how officials came
to introduce a nationwide MMR programme in the UK despite receiving a series
of alerts from overseas authorities that raised questions about the safety
of the triple-vaccine.
For all the controversy about whether
MMR causes autism, the minutes reveal that there was real concern that the
triple-vaccine would trigger several other devastating conditions among some
children. The concern was not about autism, but encephalitis-type conditions,
including meningitis, with symptoms such as swelling of the brain, swelling
of the lining of the brain or spinal chord, or swelling of the brain and the
lining of either the brain or spinal chord.
Back at Room 63 of Hannibal House, the meeting had reached item number
5 on the agenda, “MMR vaccination in Canada”.
“Members read a report of cases of mumps encephalitis which had
been associated with MMR vaccine containing the Urabe strain of the mumps
virus. The Canadian authorities had suspended the licences of MMR vaccines
containing the Urabe strain,” record the minutes.
In light of this, could officials go ahead with using the Urabe MMR
in Britain?
One attendee, whose identity has been redacted (ie withheld), dismissed
the data on which Canada’s decision was based as “slender”.
However, officials were anxious about what the British public might
think if it also became aware of the concerns. The minutes say: “A statement
would be prepared in anticipation of any adverse publicity which might arise.”
There was confusion in Whitehall over the action taken by the Canadian
authorities. They had not in fact, at that stage, withdrawn the licences for
Urabe MMR; but, as a precaution, they had decided to stop using it.
And this was not the first time that the alarm had been raised within
Whitehall about MMR. An early sign of trouble came back in May 1987 following
“adverse reactions” in America. This was a month after ministers
had decided that a UK MMR programme should be an “option”.
Although Whitehall minutes are infamous for presenting as anodyne an
accounts of events as possible, the sense of unease remains clear in the records
of the meeting on 1 May 1987 of the “Joint Committee on Vaccination
and Immunisation” (JCVI), which advised ministers to introduce MMR.
The minutes record: “The meeting questioned the dedication and
commitment of appointed officers and [identity withheld] expressed his reservations
concerning reported adverse reactions to MMR in the USA.”
Sweden’s Central Microbiological Laboratory said in a letter
to British counterparts four months later that it had 52 cases of “febrile
convulsions probably associated with MMR vaccination”, including several
with encephalitis symptoms. These were out of 360,000 doses, and Sweden continued
to vaccinate even children with a previous history of convulsion.
And a month after that, a JCVI meeting received a report from the MMR
working party that five cases of convulsions had been reported in an MMR trial
in Somerset, although only three of these appeared to be related to the triple-vaccine.
“This gave a rate of three convulsions per thousand doses of
MMR,” the minutes say. The working party “expressed concern”
about giving the triple-vaccine to children with personal or family history
of convulsions.
We have established that the data from Canada
related specifically to Urabe MMR, while the figures from America and Sweden
concerned the form of MMR that replaced it in the UK in 1992.
This was the background in which the MMR working party received news
in February 1988 about cases of mumps encephalitis linked with the triple-vaccine
in Canada and how these had led the authorities there to stop using Urabe
MMR.
Despite this, the UK began injecting hundreds of thousands of children
with Urabe MMR from October 1988.
And the warnings from overseas continued. In May 1990, the JCVI recorded
that its sub-committee on “adverse reactions” had “especial
concern” after receiving “reports from Japan of a high level of
meningo-encephalitis associated with the administration of MMR.” Japan
was using a Urabe MMR.
However, the adverse reactions committee “con-cluded that the
Japanese experience may be due to different reporting/investigating criteria
or other local factors.” Officials “also felt that the methods
of surveillance in the UK would detect problems were they occurring on that
scale.”
One unidentified JCVI member “was concerned about the possibility
of the Japanese experience being widely published in the UK.”
And another “highlighted concern” about Canada’s
decision not to use Urabe MMR, as well as the “neurological complications”
in Japan.
Canada, having stopped using Urabe MMR in 1988, took the further step
of withdrawing licences for Urabe MMR in May 1990. Malaysia, the Philippines
and Singapore followed suit.
However, not until September 1992, did the UK finally stop injecting
children with Urabe MMR. It used MMR II instead, which has a different mumps
component from Urabe.
And it was the manufacturers that forced the UK into doing this because,
as later recorded in JCVI minutes, they told health officials at a meeting
in August 1992 that they had decided to stop producing Urabe MMR and were
informing licensing authorities worldwide of its decision.
Even so, health officials “agreed on 4 September that no action
would be taken to revoke the manufacturer’s licence as a change of purchasing
policy was to be made by the department; revoking the licence would have caused
a world-wide vaccine crisis.”
It would also have revealed an astonishing secret from the bowels of
Whitehall: the UK had injected hundreds of thousands of children with a specific
type of MMR even though it was known to risk encephalitis-type adverse reactions
on a greater scale than an alternative version of the
triple-vaccine.
Another version of this article first appeared in The Daily Telegraph.
The minutes were obtained by the FOIA Centre acting on behalf of one of the
parents of a child in a group bringing litigation at the high court against
various pharmaceutical companies over MMR.
Comment on this article
NHS
was warned on MMR risk to children’s brains
FOIA
Centre news archive: the MMR files
Revealed:
how FOIA casts light on health issues
Comments on MMR (13)
Headlines
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
 |
 |
|
|||||||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|
||||||||