WILMETTE, Illinois, USA:  The new epidemiological study appearing in the latest New England Journal of Medicine issue ("A Population Based Study of Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccination and Autism" by Kreesten Meldgaard, M.D., et al) had not demonstrated that there was no connection between MMR and autism, but emphasised the fact that MMR could not be the cause of all autism, according to the United States charity, Medical Interventions for Autism.
 
Medical Interventions for Autism generates funds, co-ordinates and administers biomedical and clinical research into autism, inflammatory bowel disease and measles containing vaccines.

Dr Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist whose 1998 study in the UK medical journal, The Lancet, first raised the possibility of a link between the MMR jab and autism, and whose research is supported through Medical Interventions for Autism grants, declared, of the latest Danish study: "This is a good study as far as it goes and the authors should be congratulated for making a thorough attempt to approach this complex subject in an epidemiological study. However, there are a number of problems with this study that limit the conclusions that can be drawn. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that autism is an umbrella term for a collection of closely related disorders, whose causation is likely to prove as varied and complex as the autistic spectrum itself.  Our own research has always concentrated on a subset of children specifically with a regressive autistic developmental disorder who simultaneously suffer persistent measles infection at key sites in the bowel and a well-documented bowel disease.  This subset is of unknown size.  What the new study does suggest is that the proportion of Danish children, specifically, with the form of autism described in our studies, may be small, probably no more than 10 per cent of diagnoses. I hope the authors will continue their analysis of this cohort to establish and describe the various subsets of autistic spectrum disorder that make up their study population."

Elizabeth Birt, Founder of Medical Interventions for Autism and a board member, said: "The study proves nothing about the relationship between regressive autism and MMR.  The study participants were selected from psychiatric clinics and hospitals; no child was evaluated for immune system dysfunction, inflammatory bowel disease or the presence of measles RNA in their blood, intestines and cerebral spinal fluid.  It is time that we start looking for the biological basis of this disorder which has been well documented in US and UK children and stop using epidemiology to declare 'no relationship,' when study after study fails to be designed to even look at this issue.  When will the public health authorities stop their 'ostrich-like' behaviours and take a hard look at the peer-reviewed published science?  I am afraid that this generation of children may be permanently lost if action is not taken now.  We owe it to the children and their families who kept their part of the public health bargain and immunised their children for the 'greater good.'  These children are being treated like the Vietnam Veterans; they are being ignored because of a fear that researchers like Dr Wakefield may be right.  It is unconscionable, and the parents will not stop until we have answers as to what happened to our children."

(Source: Medical Interventions for Autism, November 6, 2002)