MMR: miracle cure or dangerous cocktail?

'It's important to remember that the immunisation is for our children's own safety against illnesses which can kill. The government are allowing more and more immigrants into the country. They could be bringing illnesses we eradicated years ago. Only tonight, I spoke to a friend of mine who had a note home from her children's school to say that there is a case of measles at the school.'

'The point about infected immigrants is a good one. I forget the exact statistic, but I recently saw a news report about the sharp resurgence of TB amongst immigrant populations. I've done some digging and found some interesting links. The best of which is: www.medinfo.co.uk/immunisations/mmr.html which gives just facts about the jab, including all 'linked' side effects and some probabilities of conditions occurring with and without the MMR vaccine.'

'Is it not a reflection on our affluent Western world that we sit and debate the pros and cons of the MMR vaccine? In the UK we have an immunisation programme that many developing countries would give their right arm for. Measles, mumps and rubella are killer diseases, and ones I would wish to protect my children against.'

Good news isn't news:

'Unfortunately the media don't report the countless ordinary success stories, only the dramatic failures. MMR has prevented countless thousands of deaths in children, yet we fear the few instances of catastrophic failure when something goes wrong and autism etc is the result. We see the few hundreds of cases of this in the news and on reports, but we don't see the hundreds of millions of healthy happy kids it has helped to bring about. But knowing this doesn't make it better. I'm weeks away from being a parent for the first time and don't look forward to making these decisions.'