Latest news with #AndrewWakefield
South Wales Argus
7 days ago
- Health
- South Wales Argus
Are local vaccination rates falling and what does it mean?
Measles remains one of the most contagious and dangerous diseases, capable of causing pneumonia, brain inflammation and even death. When vaccination rates drop, the risk spreads quickly, not only to the unvaccinated but to vulnerable individuals who rely on herd immunity for protection. To make it easier for residents to get vaccinated, the Health Board has opened a dedicated Vaccination Centre in Cwmbran. Located at 19 – 25 The Parade in the shopping centre, the facility is open Monday to Saturday from 9:15am to 4:30pm. It offers walk-in access to a wide range of vaccines for people of all ages. No appointment is needed if you are eligible, though anyone with a pre-booked slot at a GP or pharmacy is asked to keep their existing arrangements. For details about specific vaccine availability or to check your vaccination status, you can call 0300 303 1373 during office hours. The centre supports a wider network of community clinics and school catch-up sessions running across Gwent. Teenagers and children who missed scheduled immunisations during the academic year can catch up through these clinics. MMR is one of the key vaccines being prioritised, especially for children over four who have not yet received their second dose. The Health Board's aim is to build a healthier Gwent by making vaccination simple, convenient and widely available. 'We are a chubby community', locals respond after famous 'gymfluencer' slams town Cafe owner praises customers for supporting her recovery after heart attack Community dementia support: 'No need to reinvent the wheel' health chiefs told This renewed effort comes as national coverage continues to fall. In 2016, MMR uptake in the UK reached the recommended 95 percent. Today, it has fallen to around 83.9 percent, with just 73 percent of children in Gwent fully vaccinated by age five. These figures are well below the level needed to maintain herd immunity, and the consequences are already being felt. A child was recently treated at Alder Hey Children's Hospital with measles complications and sadly died. Seventeen other children were also admitted with serious illness. The child's vaccination status has not been released, but their death is a painful reminder of what can happen when protection is lost. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study claiming a link between MMR and autism has been fully discredited. His research was based on manipulated data and withdrawn. Multiple large-scale studies have since confirmed no link between the vaccine and autism. Despite this, misinformation still circulates and contributes to hesitation. It is critical to rely on accurate science and public health guidance to make informed decisions. Roald Dahl's own experience reflects the reality of measles before the vaccine was available. His daughter Olivia died from the disease in 1962 at the age of seven. In a public letter years later, he wrote: "Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything. 'Are you feeling all right?' I asked her. 'I feel all sleepy,' she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead." ABUHB's message is: measles is real, herd immunity is real and vaccinations keep all safe. The numbers are clear and real, and the risks are too great to ignore. Vaccination is not only a personal decision, it is an act of care for the community. In Gwent, the support and services are already in place. Now is the time to use them.
Telegraph
15-07-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Britain is facing a measles epidemic because parents no longer believe in science
Sharp conversational swerves: every parent is adept at these. One minute you're enjoying an amiable chat with another parent at the school gates, the next you're hurtling towards some contentious topic at high speed. Unless you know the other person well, you don't want to be going anywhere near smartphone use right now (it's extraordinary how ferociously parents will defend their own cowardice around excessive phone usage, particularly in a post- Adolescence era). Consequently, books and reading have also become hot-button topics and up there with sugar, which is absurd. But ever since Covid, the real social powder keg has, of course, been childhood vaccines. A couple of months ago, I was too late with my swerve, and the unthinkable happened: Andrew Wakefield's name was mentioned. There it sat, a fizzing grenade between us, while this (intelligent) mother of two explained to me that she didn't believe in the concept of herd immunity and had refused the MMR vaccine for both of her children – you know, on account of the autism link. As a journalist who was taught to triple-check every fact – and then check it again – I have a very low patience threshold when it comes to the casual lobbing of inaccuracies. I may even have held up a professorial index as I explained what I'm sure this woman already knew: that Wakefield's infamous 1998 paper was found to be based on scientific misconduct, with the studies fraudulent and the data misrepresented. That as a result, it was retracted. That in terms of scientific record, in terms of science, Wakefield's 'findings' do not exist. At this point, the woman shrugged, crossed her arms, and said something that has stayed with me: 'Yeah, well, what he wrote confirmed everything I've always felt in my gut to be true.' I thought about the ramifications of that statement yesterday, as I read about the child who tragically died at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool last week, after having contracted measles. This is the second child to have succumbed to an acute measles infection in Britain this decade. A shocking statistic when you consider that this is an entirely preventable disease and that just eight years ago, the UK had achieved measles elimination status. Now, while we don't know the age, gender or general health of the child, we do know that they were one of 17 youngsters treated at the hospital in recent weeks after becoming severely unwell with measles. We know from an Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust spokesman that the hospital is extremely concerned by an 'increasing number of children contracting measles', and we know from campaigns the NHS has been forced to launch in recent years that uptake of all childhood immunisations has seen a consistent decline, with the MMR vaccine uptake in particular now at its lowest level since the early 2010s. If only this were just a Covid hangover. If only the rest of the drop in uptake could be blamed on vaccine hesitancy in migrant communities, which is undoubtedly also a factor. Even the scourge of misinformation could (and should) be vigorously fought against in various ways – although it's depressing that adults are now statistically more inclined to fall for it than youngsters (as schools now teach children how to spot disinformation). But what we're witnessing is, I suspect, something far harder to fight, and that's the triumph of feeling over fact. Feelings are no longer simply used to interpret inner sensations. Today, they validate our beliefs – even if those beliefs came from TikTok. Have a look at the online message boards and the comments section of any article relating to the MMR and you'll see the same kind of language used by that mother of two. It doesn't matter what the doctors and scientists say, or what the potential perils are: what these people 'feel to be true' trumps any factual evidence offered up. Why do you think celebrities have such influence on this subject? Because they feel harder than anyone else. They 'speak feelings' better too. Paediatric hospitals the world over must have wept when vaccine-cautious US actress Jenny McCarthy said: 'Ask 99.9 per cent of parents who have children with autism if we'd rather have the measles versus autism – we'd sign up for the measles.' Because those are the options? It also doesn't seem to matter that those who are refusing to vaccinate their children have largely benefited from herd immunity themselves. In fact, ironically, I think it may make them more dangerous, since they have never experienced or witnessed the ravages of these diseases first-hand. I would never wish either of those things on anyone, so how does one impress the seriousness of the situation on a privileged but oblivious demographic?
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Measles cases are surging in Europe and the US. This is what the anti-vax conspiracy theory has brought us
It's easy to say in hindsight, but also true, that even when the anti-vax movement was in its infancy in the late 90s before I had kids, let alone knew what you were supposed to vaccinate them against, I could smell absolute garbage. After all, Andrew Wakefield, a doctor until he was struck off in 2010, was not the first crank to dispute the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. There was a movement against the diphtheria-tetanus-whooping cough vaccine in the 1970s in the UK, and a similar one in the US in the early 1980s. The discovery of vaccination in the first place was not without its critics, and enough people to form a league opposed the smallpox rollout in the early 1800s on the basis that it was unchristian to share tissue with an animal. So Wakefield's infamous Lancet study, in which he claimed a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism, going as far as to pin down the exact mechanism by which one led to the other, was new only in so far as it had all the branding of reputable research, when in fact it was maleficent woo-woo, a phenomenon as old as knowledge. It was noticeable, though, that it fell on parched ground – a lot of people were very keen for it to be true. That was partly simple news appetite: vaccines are inherently boring. Devised by humans co-operating with one another, motivated by nothing more complicated than a desire to help the species – and indiscriminately, no one baby more worthy of protection than any other – there is no animating conflict here, nothing hidden, no complexity. Is there anything more tedious than humanity at its finest? So wouldn't it be at least piquant if it turned out to be a giant mistake? Alongside that, there was a perception that autism diagnoses had gone through the roof, and that wasn't wrong. The increase in recorded incidence was 787% between 1998 and 2018, and no amount of, 'Steady on, guys – it might just be because we've got better at understanding what we're looking at' would deter people from wishing for one simple answer. Wakefield also landed his bogus study just as performative parenting was getting under way – a new understanding of child-rearing, in which parenting well became the summit of moral excellence, and the way to prove your credentials was to be excessively cautious about absolutely everything. It seemed pretty Calvinist – the fundamentals of parenting superiority were mysterious, but you could spot the Chosen Parent by the fact that they never ran with the herd. The depressing thing about the anti-vax timeline is that the collective global mind worked as it should and yet didn't work at all. Other scientists tried to replicate Wakefield's results, and couldn't. The right questions were asked and he was discredited. The lie might have gone around the world, but when the truth finally did get its pants on, it won a decisive victory. Yet a generalised distrust of vaccination as a concept had been spawned, ready to meet any fresh infectious disease. That didn't delay the Covid vaccine rollout – it's hard to see how it could have been faster – but did sully the triumph with the loud disquiet of a minority who thought they were being deliberately poisoned by the state. The effects of the MMR controversy, specifically, are revealing themselves now, nearly 30 years later: measles cases in Europe are at the highest levels in 25 years; in the US, cases are at a 33-year-high; last week a child in Liverpool died having contracted measles. It's unknown whether the child was vaccinated (no vaccine can guarantee complete immunity) and it doesn't matter – it wouldn't make it any less tragic if that child's parents had been caught in the swirl of misinformation, or any more tragic if they hadn't. And it wouldn't be germane anyway: everybody is better protected when everybody is vaccinated. This is never a decision you are making just for yourself. It's probably the most depressing conspiracy theory there is, not because the impacts are so much graver than some cranks who believe the Earth to be flat, but because vaccination is the most concrete proof of how much we rely on one another's care and rationality. That's true beyond disease – we also need each other for democracy, science, culture, civic life and everything – but in no other area can you see that, count it and put it on a graph. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Measles cases are surging in Europe and the US. This is what the anti-vax conspiracy theory has brought us
It's easy to say in hindsight, but also true, that even when the anti-vax movement was in its infancy in the late 90s before I had kids, let alone knew what you were supposed to vaccinate them against, I could smell absolute garbage. After all, Andrew Wakefield, a doctor until he was struck off in 2010, was not the first crank to dispute the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. There was a movement against the diphtheria-tetanus-whooping cough vaccine in the 1970s in the UK, and a similar one in the US in the early 1980s. The discovery of vaccination in the first place was not without its critics, and enough people to form a league opposed the smallpox rollout in the early 1800s on the basis that it was unchristian to share tissue with an animal. So Wakefield's infamous Lancet study, in which he claimed a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism, going as far as to pin down the exact mechanism by which one led to the other, was new only in so far as it had all the branding of reputable research, when in fact it was maleficent woo-woo, a phenomenon as old as knowledge. It was noticeable, though, that it fell on parched ground – a lot of people were very keen for it to be true. That was partly simple news appetite: vaccines are inherently boring. Devised by humans co-operating with one another, motivated by nothing more complicated than a desire to help the species – and indiscriminately, no one baby more worthy of protection than any other – there is no animating conflict here, nothing hidden, no complexity. Is there anything more tedious than humanity at its finest? So wouldn't it be at least piquant if it turned out to be a giant mistake? Alongside that, there was a perception that autism diagnoses had gone through the roof, and that wasn't wrong. The increase in recorded incidence was 787% between 1998 and 2018, and no amount of, 'Steady on, guys – it might just be because we've got better at understanding what we're looking at' would deter people from wishing for one simple answer. Wakefield also landed his bogus study just as performative parenting was getting under way – a new understanding of child-rearing, in which parenting well became the summit of moral excellence, and the way to prove your credentials was to be excessively cautious about absolutely everything. It seemed pretty Calvinist – the fundamentals of parenting superiority were mysterious, but you could spot the Chosen Parent by the fact that they never ran with the herd. The depressing thing about the anti-vax timeline is that the collective global mind worked as it should and yet didn't work at all. Other scientists tried to replicate Wakefield's results, and couldn't. The right questions were asked and he was discredited. The lie might have gone around the world, but when the truth finally did get its pants on, it won a decisive victory. Yet a generalised distrust of vaccination as a concept had been spawned, ready to meet any fresh infectious disease. That didn't delay the Covid vaccine rollout – it's hard to see how it could have been faster – but did sully the triumph with the loud disquiet of a minority who thought they were being deliberately poisoned by the state. The effects of the MMR controversy, specifically, are revealing themselves now, nearly 30 years later: measles cases in Europe are at the highest levels in 25 years; in the US, cases are at a 33-year-high; last week a child in Liverpool died having contracted measles. It's unknown whether the child was vaccinated (no vaccine can guarantee complete immunity) and it doesn't matter – it wouldn't make it any less tragic if that child's parents had been caught in the swirl of misinformation, or any more tragic if they hadn't. And it wouldn't be germane anyway: everybody is better protected when everybody is vaccinated. This is never a decision you are making just for yourself. It's probably the most depressing conspiracy theory there is, not because the impacts are so much graver than some cranks who believe the Earth to be flat, but because vaccination is the most concrete proof of how much we rely on one another's care and rationality. That's true beyond disease – we also need each other for democracy, science, culture, civic life and everything – but in no other area can you see that, count it and put it on a graph. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
Newsweek
04-07-2025
- Health
- Newsweek
Myth-Busters—Vaccine Edition
Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Vaccines are among the most rigorously tested and effective tools in modern medicine, yet myths and misinformation persist. Here, we address some of the most common claims with science-backed facts. Claim 1: Vaccine Ingredients Like Mercury or Thimerosal Are Harmful Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, was once used in multi-dose vaccine vials to prevent contamination. Thimerosal breaks down into ethylmercury, which does not accumulate in the body and is not the same as the toxic methylmercury found in certain fish. Thimerosal has been removed from nearly all vaccines in the United States since 2001, except for some flu vaccines, and extensive studies show no evidence of harm at the doses used in vaccines. Conclusion? Myth. Claim 2: Vaccines Cause Autism The belief that vaccines cause autism originated from a 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, which was later retracted due to fraud and ethical violations. Large-scale studies involving hundreds of thousands of children have found no link between vaccines and autism. The timing of autism diagnosis often coincides with the vaccination schedule, but correlation does not mean causation. Conclusion? Myth. An immunization nurse holds a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (brand name: Comirnaty) at Borinquen Health Care Center on May 29, 2025, in Miami, Fla. An immunization nurse holds a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (brand name: Comirnaty) at Borinquen Health Care Center on May 29, 2025, in Miami, 3: COVID-19 Vaccines Cause Cancer Some rumors claim COVID-19 vaccines cause "turbo cancer" due to mRNA or SV40 fragments. However, mRNA from vaccines cannot enter the cell nucleus or alter DNA. There is no scientific evidence linking COVID-19 vaccines or SV40 fragments to cancer. mRNA is also naturally present in all foods and is harmless when consumed. Conclusion? Myth. Claim 4: Governments Exaggerate Disease Threats to Push Vaccines Vaccines have saved an estimated 154 million lives in the past 50 years. Diseases like smallpox, which once killed 30 percent of those infected, have been eradicated thanks to vaccination. When vaccination rates drop, diseases return, as seen in recent measles outbreaks. Public health guidelines are based on decades of research, not political agendas. Conclusion? Myth. Claim 5: Homeopathy and Supplements Can Replace Vaccines Homeopathic remedies and supplements have not been shown to trigger an immune response or prevent disease like vaccines do. Even most homeopathic practitioners support vaccination, and Faculty of Homeopathy explicitly recommends vaccines as first-line protection. Conclusion? Myth. Claim 6: Healthy Children Are at Higher Risk of Dying from Infections If Not Vaccinated Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, hundreds of children died from measles each year in the U.S. After widespread vaccination, deaths dropped by over 99 percent. Recent outbreaks in unvaccinated communities show that risk returns when vaccination rates fall. Conclusion? Truth. Why This Matters Misinformation about vaccines has real consequences. As of June 2025, three people have died from measles in the U.S. this year—more than any year in the previous decade. Other children who have caught the measles without getting the vaccine first will be at risk of other complications including brain inflammation later on in life. This is why it's important to trust credible sources and follow science-backed recommendations. Vaccines have been rigorously tested, reviewed, and monitored for decades. They are one of the greatest success stories in medicine, saving lives and preventing suffering. If you have questions about vaccines, talk to a trusted health care provider—don't rely on social media or Dr. Google. Protect yourself, your children, and your community. Dr. Annalicia Pickering is a board-certified pediatrician on faculty at Stanford University. Niharika Rane is a Masters of Public Health student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Akul Shrivastava, Srilalitha Nair, and Sahngwie Yim are youth volunteers with the American Red Cross. The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
