According to Dawn Richardson from the US vaccine safety campaigning organisation PROVE, a recent Danish MMR-Autism study (much trumpeted as “proof” of MMR’s safety) should be disregarded. She points out that the children studied had grown up in a Thimerosal-free vaccination regime, unlike children in the US or UK, so may better tolerate a triple jab.

The Danish Government banned the mercury-based preservative Thimerosal from vaccines before January 1991, the birth date of the oldest children covered by the study, because of fears that it could damage children’s immune system and neurological development.

SafeMinds, an anti-vaccination advocacy group based in New Jersey (US) rejects the relevance of a new Danish study "proving" no link between MMR and autism. They point out that it examined the link between MMR and autism in general, rather than the link between the jab and 'regressive autism', the form involved in the debate.

The Madsen study of more than half a million Danish children born between 1991 and 1998 [1] found that the rate of autism was 8% less in the 82% of children who were given the MMR vaccine: about three cases of autism or autism-related disorders per 1,000 children. In addition, it found that there was no evidence that the children who had developed autism were more likely to have developed the illness just after or a similar time after their MMR jab, as would have been expected if there were a link.