The UK Government has been accused of “utterly inexplicable complacency” regarding its consistent denial that all reputable studies have shown that the triple MMR jab was safe. The attack comes not from some virulent anti-vaccination group, but from Dr Peter Fletcher, who was Chief Scientific Officer at the UK Department of Health in the 1970s, and a former medical adviser to the UK Committee on the Safety of Medicines. His main responsibility at that time was to decide whether new vaccines were safe.

Peter stated that:

• there was growing evidence worldwide that MMR was causing brain, gut and immune system damage in certain children
• neither the tenfold leap in autism over the last 15 years nor the huge rise in inflammatory bowel disease or immune disorders in children could be explained away by better statistics or diagnosis
• epidemiological studies, frequently heralded by Governments as evidence of MMR safety, are blunt instruments unable to pick up the small numbers of children adversely affected by vaccines
• the MMR safety trials conducted before its inclusion in the UK’s mass immunisation programme had been inadequate