MMR Claimant Experts (who produced reports that were served)

Professor M B Abou-Donia

Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and a Professor of Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Centre

Pharmacology and Neurobiology

Dr Kenneth Aitken

K.Aitken Consultancy, Independent Consultant

Child Clinical Neuropsychologist

Professor William Banks

Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology, both departments at Saint Louis University School of Medicine

Pharmacology and Physiology

Dr. Edward Bilsky

Associate Professor of Pharmacology, University of New England College of Medicine

Pharmacology

James Jeffrey Bradstreet, MD, Fellow, AAFP

International Child Development Resource Center Adjunct, Professor of Neurosciences, Department of Psychology, Stetson, University Celebration, Florida

Child development

Vera S. Byers, M.D., Ph.D

President of Immunology, Inc

Immunologist

Professor Neal Castagnoli, Jr.

Peters Professor of Chemistry, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA

Chemistry

Dr A Peter Fletcher MB BS PhD FFPM (Dist)

Former regulator Industry Expert

Professor Noam Harpaz

Associate Attending Pathologist, The Mount Sinai Hospital, Director, Division of Gastrointestinal Pathology, The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Associate Professor of Pathology, The Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York

Pathologist

Professor Ronald C. Kennedy, Ph.D

Professor and Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center located in Lubbock, Texas

Immunologist

Marcel Kinsbourne, D.M. (OXON), M.R.C.P. (LOND).

Research Professor of Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and Professor of Psychology at the New School University in New York

Neurologist

Arthur Krigsman MD New York University Hospital

Pediatric Gastroenterologist

Dr John March

Head of Mycoplasmology at the Moredun Research Institute (MRI), Edinburgh Vaccine development

Molecular Biologist

Professor John J Marchalonis

Professor and Chairman, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Arizona, College of Medicine, Tucson, Arizona

Microbiologist and Immunologist

Professor Johnjoe McFadden

Professor of Molecular Genetics at the School of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford

Genetics

John H. Menkes, M.D Professor Emeritus of Neurology and Pediatrics, University of California, Los Angeles Director Emeritus of Pediatric Neurology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Neurologist

Dr Scott M Montgomery

Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Epidemiologist

Professor John J. O’Leary, MD, DPhil, MSc, BSc, FRCPath, FFPathRCPI

Professor of Pathology at Trinity College Dublin and Consultant Histopathologist, St. James’s Hospital, Dublin and the Coombe Women’s Hospital

Pathologist

Professor Samuel Shapiro MB, FRCP(E)

Visiting Professor of Epidemiology, Mailman School of School of Public Health, Columbia University.  Emeritus Director, Slone Epidemiology Center, Boston University School of Public Health

Epidemiologist

Dr Orla Sheils

Senior Lecturer in Molecular Pathology, University of Dublin, Trinity College (TCD).

Molecular Pathologist

Dr Fiona Scott BSc (Hons) PhD C.Psychol

University of Cambridge

Chartered Psychologist

Dr Carol Stott BSc (Hons) PhD (CANTAB) C.Psychol

University of Cambridge

Chartered Psychologist

Professor SAMY SUISSA

Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University and Royal Victoria Hospital Montreal, Canada

Statistician

Professor Richard Tedder

Head of the Joint Department of Virology, University College London. Also Clinical Lead for the UCLH NHS Trust Department of Virology and Clinical Head of Microbiology Services UCLH NHS Trust

Virologist

Professor Edward J Thompson Doctor of Medicine (MD, FRCP,FRCPath) and a Doctor of Science (DSc,PhD)

Head of the Department of Neuro-Immunology at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery

Neuro-Immunologist

Professor John Walker- Smith

Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Gastroenterology in the University of London

Paediatric Gastroenterologist

Dr. Troy D. Wood

Associate Professor in Chemistry and Adjunct Faculty in Structural Biology at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

Chemistry and Structural Biology

The court case was not heard and parents did not lose. Legal Aid decided to pull their funds for the sick children at the last minute. Legal Aid is government run and the government took out an indemnity to protect the drug companies from parents suing and we as parents had no idea that the litigation case was set up to fail right from the start. The government could not afford for the children to win and thus they could not afford for the statements from the experts to be read out in court. I have these reports and am told they are sealed and I am not allowed to produce them here, however tempted. Below is a ‘summing up by Justice Keith when a few of us parents tried to continue the case without the support of Legal Aid and spoke in front of a room full of drug company representatives about our sick children at the Royal Courts of Justice. I was very proud to be part of that group.

"It is important for the claimants’ litigation friends to understand why their children’s claims are not being allowed to proceed. It is not because the court thinks that the claims have no merit. Although this litigation has been going on for very many years, the question whether the claims have merit has never been addressed by the court. The reason why the claims have not been allowed to proceed is because everyone has realistically recognised for some time that it is just not practicable for the claims to proceed without public funding. With no realistic prospect of public funding being restored for any of the claims save for the two which are now to proceed as unitary actions, the dissolution of the litigation became inevitable.

Before leaving the litigation, I wish to express my thanks to the defendants’ legal teams for the assistance they have given the court. Although at all times advancing the interests of their clients as is to be expected in adversarial litigation, they recognised the needs of the claimants’ litigation friends, and provided them with all the information they needed, as well as affording them the occasional indulgence. The assembly of the various bundles of documents, and the preparation of the skeleton arguments, were of an exceptionally high order. But my final words must go to the claimants’ litigation friends. As I said in an earlier judgment, no-one can fail to have enormous sympathy for the parents of the children to whom this litigation has related. They have spoken eloquently and with great feeling of the tragedies which befell them when their children became ill. They blame the vaccines produced by the defendants for damaging their children, and they are bitter over their inability to proceed with their claims. But when they came to court, they always expressed themselves in a measured and moderate tone, despite their disenchantment with the Legal Services Commission which they believe has let them down, and at all times they treated the court with courtesy and respect. They made my difficult task less wearing that it might otherwise have been. I am grateful to them for that." Justice Keith.

Dr Andrew Wakefield has made front page news over the last few days in some of the national papers prompting an immediate reaction that it is lunacy to give him space, and that what he says is "balderdash". What is highly questionable (and vindictive) is to blame him for all the ills of MMR vaccine because he published a paper in the Lancet 15 years ago (which has neither been "discredited" nor did it claim that MMR causes autism) and because he suggested that children should be given the single measles vaccine.

The association between autism and MMR was never assessed by the UK courts because of the withdrawal of legal aid. In the USA and Italy the courts have awarded compensation for MMR vaccine damage. The USA also has an expert committee for assessing claims of vaccine damage and they have compensated other parents for damage caused by MMR which did not then need to go through the full legal process.

How long does it take the UK government to learn that cover-up is invariably a more serious matter than the original crime or mistake? It's time the spotlight was turned on Professor David Salisbury, who had little or no background in immunization and had only been in post a short time when he reassured his committee that they did not need to worry about the adverse effects of Pluserix despite its withdrawal in Canada and serious reports from Japan.  It's time to turn the spotlight on the process by which I believe Brian Deer was recruited by the Department of Health to help rescue their MMR programme. It is, of course, easy to conjecture and it needs a full enquiry which must come sooner or later, the results of which demand full media attention.

I am aware that in 1992 two of the three brands of MMR were withdrawn overnight on the safety ground that they caused viral meningitis and that when MMR was first introduced the Department of Health stated that the single vaccine would continue to be available. For their own reasons they changed their minds later. Had they not done so, those who had concerns could have continued to protect their children from measles and this present outbreak would not be happening.

I know that it is officially denied that there is any link between the vaccine and any form of autism (even though American and Italian courts appear to have accepted the link). What is not denied is that the rate of autism has increased substantially since the 1990s (from about one in 2500 to as many as one in 50). Instead of blaming Andrew Wakefield every time there is a measles outbreak why does the Government not put funding into finding the cause of this distressing condition? If it can be shown that the cause of the increase in autism has absolutely nothing to do with vaccines, then that will remove the suspicion that it does and you can all forget that Andrew Wakefield ever existed.

Governments should be putting huge resources into finding out what is causing this disabling condition which is putting an immense strain on families and draining the welfare resources of the UK and other countries, and attacking doctors and parents of telling lies

By not listening to the Experts, families and more importantly to the children then this in my opinion has to come into the category of “child abuse”.

Professor John Walker Smith, who was part of the Lancet team, was exonerated in March 2012 in the Autism MMR GMC Case. The GMC issued the following statement following the judgment “Mr. Justice Mitting has made a number of criticisms about the inadequacy of the reasons given by the panel for the decisions they made on the charges facing Professor Walker-Smith. The panel of medical and non-medical members, having heard all the evidence, were required to set out very clearly why they reached the decisions they did. They failed to do that in relation to key questions, including whether Professor Walker-Smith’s actions were undertaken for the purpose of medical practice or medical research and whether procedures performed on the children were clinically necessary. These were important points that needed to be addressed by the panel in the determination and the failure to do so was the major cause of Mr. Justice Mitting allowing the appeal”. (Extract of official GMC Statement).

In my opinion, this also stands for Dr. Wakefield who did not have the funds to challenge the GMC as Professor Walker-Smith did.

Isabella Thomas.

Mother of two boys who were part of the Lancet study