[BPSDB]Like an undead in a Hammer Horror film, the MMR hoax will not die. Here is the Daily Hate’s latest effort to revive it.
If you read the article you will find buried within it another possible cause of the little girl’s syndrome; at age two weeks she suffered a severe herpes virus infection which nearly killed her and doctors feared she would suffer developmental problems. You would think that the current measles epidemic would have made the “ journalists” on this disgusting rag realise the consequences of unfounded health scares but evidently not.
So let us consider what would happen if the antivax crowd got their way and vaccinations against measles mumps and rubella ceased. (At this point let me express my gratitude to Bad Science forumite DeeTee for pointing me in the direction of the Green Book which is full of useful information on disease and vaccination.)
The JABS crowd urge us to “think of the children” so let us do exactly that. There are roughly twelve million children in the UK (From this there were 11.6 million under-16s in 2004).
Without vaccination virtually all children would go down with measles, mumps and rubella. A few would be naturally immune so, as DeeTee does, let us assume that these diseases afflict 95% of children.
So of the children currently alive in the UK 11.4 million would get measles (fever, rash and a miserable illness). One million would suffer middle ear infection, nearly half a million will develop pneumonia, sixty thousand will suffer febrile convusion, 11,400 will develop encephalitis, 1140 will develop a (usually fatal) form of encephalitis called SSPE. Many that survive will lose their sight. 2,400 will die of acute measles.
11.4 million will contract mumps which will lead to over a million cases of the unpleasant mumps meningitis, 456,000 cases of acute panceatitis (which is nasty in itself and contributes to a greatly increased risk of diabetes), 24,000 victims will be sterilised and over a thousand will suffer bilateral deafness.
Finally, 11.4 million will contract rubella. Of these 1,140 will suffer joint inflammation which may develop into chronic arthritis, about four thousand will develop the bleeding disorder immune thrombocytopenia, 1800 will develop encephalitis and there will be about a thosand cases of congenital rubella syndrome.
Having thought of the children, I say bring on the MMR! I also suggest that those who have been blinded, deafened or otherwise avoidably disabled as a result of the MMR hoax should sue the perpetrators of the MMR hoax in the tabloid press.
Tags: Daily Mail, health scares, measles, MMR hoax, mumps, rubella
January 24, 2009 at 1:13 am |
monkey viruzez
January 25, 2009 at 2:35 pm |
Thought-provoking post, thanks. I see that the DM is still not allowing polite, sensitive, helpful comments like the one I submitted – pointing to the real evidence on MMR safety.
January 27, 2009 at 8:46 pm |
Well-stated!
Hib outbreak on my side of the pond, thanks to some unvaxxxed folks.
January 17, 2010 at 12:21 am |
[...] the end of January, I covered the Daily Mail’s attempt to revive the MMR hoax here. A few month’s later, I noted that Paul Dacre is now in denial about his paper’s [...]
October 29, 2010 at 11:43 am |
[...] Back in January 2009 I considered the consequences of not using MMR, basing my figures on the DoH Green Book. [...]