Says Barbara Ellen in The Observer:

Single jab vaccines were (still are) completely unregulated. It was not possible to buy them from the NHS, so one had to trawl the internet. In the end, the person who injected my daughter sat in an office rented for the morning, with an open suitcase full of vaccine. As he plunged the needle into her little arm, I felt sick - this so-called vaccine could be anything.

Such was the hysteria of the times that we just accepted the unsettling ‘back of a lorry’ feel to the situation, though since then, the mood seems to have changed. Most parents I speak to go straight for the triple vaccine. Worryingly, many others opt not to have their children vaccinated at all, which, in herd-immunity terms, is a disaster. Measles can kill - I dread the day there is an epidemic, the news that a child has died.

One cannot believe that Wakefield meant any harm. One also sympathises with those parents of autistic children, who grab at anything that could illuminate the darkness surrounding their child’s condition. However, for a while back there, what was happening around MMR felt like urban voodoo, with snake-oil merchants seizing the opportunity to exploit gullible, panicking parents (guilty). My daughter is having her follow-up booster in the triple vaccine form, but I have a feeling that this mess isn’t over yet.

From Max Dunbar’s review of Damian Thompson’s excellent little book Counterknowledge:

Imagine being a 9/11 Truther or a believer in homeopathy. You have unearthed a vast, hidden conspiracy that most of the world has completely missed. Either it is the conspiracy of PNAC engineering the Twin Towers demolitions as a pretext to declare war against the Middle East, or a secret plan by the medical/scientific/pharmaceutical establishment to cover up the healing powers of alternative medicine so they can carry on selling useless drug treatments.

You can dismiss the testimony of most doctors, scientists, physicists or engineers because their very experience and qualifications show that they are part of the elite and therefore have an interest in covering up the scam. Indeed, any contradictory evidence can be ignored - it will have been planted. Your own lack of evidence doesn’t bother you; obviously, the conspirators are going to cover their tracks. The absence of proof is proof. Ignorance is the smoking gun.

Most people reject your explanations because they are brainwashed by the corporate media. Only you, and a handful of fellow Truthers, are smart enough to see through the lies. What a boost! And presumably, when the conspiracy is found out, your greater intelligence and heroism will be recognised and you will be given the power and rewards such qualities accord you.

Since I do not have time, or the inclination, to respond to the reams of material that anti-vaccine advocates can cut and paste into comment boxes, any such comments will be deleted or treated as spam. While I defend your right to believe and propagate such nonsense, I have the right to choose who can set up a stall in my front yard.

So, Anec Dote and other cranks, if you are reading, your comments variously linking to or referencing David Kirby, The Huffingdon Post and the right wing Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons has been appropriately filed in the electronic shredder.

A BBC report with written by Nick Triggle choses an interesting word to describe scientific disagreement with Andrew Wakefield (Hat-tip Butterflies and Wheels):

Scores of campaigners, watched by police, had gathered from early morning waving placards in support of Dr Andrew Wakefield.

Most were parents with autistic children wanting to show support for the man who made the link between the three-in-one measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab and the disorder.

Of course, since his paper was published in the Lancet medical journal in 1998, medical experts have sought to discredit the findings.

Discredit in this context has a slightly derogatory tone to it. Are the studies that failed to confirm his virological findings an attempt to discredit Wakefield? Are the epidemiological studies performed to see if a link does exist with autism designed to discredit Wakefield?

Triggle also writes that Wakefield made the link between MMR vaccine and autism. No he didn’t. He alleged a link. His hypothesis has been refuted on every level. Even at the time no data existed that supported his hypothesis.

And yet again the BBC, presumably in the interests of balance, shamefully provide a link in the story to JABS - the UK’s leading anti-vaccine website.

Here’s Inderjit Singh, a sikh BBC 4 Thought for the Day author, on the human embryology bill, proving that it isn’t just christians who are willing to misrepresent:

What is particularly concerning about the Bill’s proposals to allow the creation of part human and part animal embryos is, that while it may help in combating illnesses like multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease, it also opens the door for research that could, particularly if used by the less scrupulous, significantly change what it means to be human.

There is also the fear that over the years, in the interest of life enhancement, we have been inching away from a previously accepted view of the sanctity of human life. If for example, the research now being contemplated had been conducted by Hitler’s scientists in the 1940s, it would in all probability have been universally condemned.

To compare those involved in hybrid embryo research to Nazi scientists, such as Prof. Dr. Klaus Schilling, is perhaps the most stupid statement on this subject uttered in the past few days. Apparently being a religious figure gives you the right to a platform to spout unopposed ahistorical nonsense on the BBC’s leading news programme on national radio.