For four and a half years over 1,300 families have been involved in a class action against the three manufacturers of the MMR vaccine (coordinated by solicitors Alexander Harris % 0161 925 5555). They allege that the jab has led to autism in their child or children. To its credit, the UK’s legal aid system has given £15 million to the action. The majority, for the first time ever, was given in order to fund further medical research in the quest for hard evidence.

The court hearing is scheduled for April 2004 but it may not take place. Shortly (and some say, suspiciously) after a striking new piece of evidence suggesting an MMR-autism link was discovered, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) informed the families in the class action that (i) in its opinion, the ‘striking new evidence’ was not sufficient to fight their claims in court so (ii) would grant no further aid to bring the action to court. It is estimated that a further £10 million would be needed.

The striking new evidence (which may or may not be linked to what may or may not be a Government- or pharmaceutical company-inspired attempt to bury the issue) was gathered in spite of what some see as a concerted campaign to make the necessary tests impossible to carry out. The study required taking samples of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) from children who had developed autism shortly after an MMR jab and comparing these with samples taken from twenty controls (most of the controls were children with leukaemia).

Astonishingly, during 2002, 245 of the 246 public or private hospitals equipped to take CSF samples in Britain refused to help, mainly on the grounds that the samples were part of what was in fact medical research (ed.- for which ethical permission must be given) rather than medical treatment. In November 2002 one hospital briefly agreed to take the samples before putting the matter before its ethics committee. Four months later it decided not to proceed for the same reason.

A hospital prepared to take the CSF samples was found in Detroit (US). In March 2003 the families involved in the study flew over at short notice only to be told, a few hours after landing, that that hospital had also backed out for the same reason as the English hospitals. Aware that this might happen, the families had secretly set up a first reserve. It was at this hospital in Port Huron, two hours along the coast of Lake Michigan from Detroit, that the samples were eventually to be taken.

It almost did not happen. The night before the families’ appointment with the Detroit hospital, the MMR manufacturers jointly applied to a London court for an injunction to stop the CSF samples being taken. Their arguments (again, that taking the samples was invasive and unethical) were dismissed by the judge, but he agreed to a two hour delay so that one of the manufacturers’ doctors could be present at the Port Huron hospital while the samples were being taken. As it turned out, not a doctor but a lawyer turned up to observe.

The return journey to the UK was equally eventful. After the flight had boarded, five US customs officers took the lawyers and doctors accompanying the families off the plane for separate, 30-minute taped interviews. The main line of questioning was why the children hadn’t been tested back in the UK. The US Customs even discussed the ethics and invasiveness of the sample-taking, suggesting prior briefing. During the transit at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam (Netherlands), they were again singled out by Customs for the same questioning.

After all this even some of the doctors and lawyers smelt a conspiracy. The samples were put under armed guard the night of the return to England, then flown on to Dublin, where University College’s Professor O’Leary conducted the analyses.

The new evidence
Of the six samples taken from UK children with autism, three (50%) contained tiny genetic fragments of measles virus in their spinal fluid. The virus strain was the same as that used in the MMR vaccine. Of the 20+ control CSF samples later taken and analysed, only one (<5%) contained measles virus. The study is, of course, too small to be definitive (so needs to be confirmed by a larger study) but the results are very significant.

Footnote
The conduct of the meeting when class action representatives presented the findings to the Legal Services Commission (almost immediately after which the LSC announced its decision not to grant further funding) suggested that it had made up its mind whatever the findings. This was confirmed by the later discovery that the LSC’s e-mailed press release reporting their decision not to grant further aid was dated the day before the presentation of the findings took place. The LSC later tried to justify this by explaining that its decision had reflected a change of policy rather than an assessment of evidence. “In retrospect it was not appropriate for the LSC to fund research. The courts are not the place to prove new medical truths.” That judgement is now up for judicial review (itself an extremely expensive business) but the LSC is not bound by its recommendations.

Private Eye’s Heather Mills compared the cost of what many see as getting a little justice for these 1,300 children (estimated at a further £10 million) with the cost of caring for severely autistic children and other costs incurred by the UK Government:

• The cost of caring for three or four severely autistic children throughout their lives - £10 million
• The cost of maintaining the empty Greenwich dome until hand over - £20 million
• The cost so far of the Bloody Sunday inquiry - £137 million

Ed.- Separate research in the US is said to have identified eighteen similarly autistic children with measles virus in their spinal fluid. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed or published. We shall, of course, continue to follow the issue closely.