Thirty-three people, all but one of whom are under the age of five, have been diagnosed with autism in one area of Cork, it was claimed at a Dail committee yesterday. The submission was made by a group of parents concerned about a possible link between the condition and MMR vaccination.
The as yet unpublished survey found the 33 cases in a population of just 13,000. It claimed it showed the incidence of autism was rapidly increasing, Ms Miriam Twomey, the chairwoman of the Hope Project which conducted the survey, told the joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children.
The committee is examining childhood vaccination policy in response to public concerns about the risks of vaccination and poor take-up rates. It will hear submissions from the medical profession and the Department of Health in two weeks and their view is that all children should be vaccinated.
Ms Twomey said parents who suspected vaccinations had a role to play in the onset of their child's autism were told by the medical profession that bad reactions to a vaccine were limited to one in every 10,000 cases. "I'm afraid this is simply not true and I have personally been involved in a population-based study of an area in Cork where the numbers of autistic children far exceed these grossly falsified numbers," she said.
The parents had similar stories, with normally functioning children suddenly becoming "derailed", usually before the age of two, and "generally following vaccination". Not every child, she said, could handle "the insult to their immune systems" of multiple vaccines.
Five parents' groups made presentations to the Oireachtas committee. They said the MMR vaccination was withdrawn in Japan in 1993 due to incidents of aseptic meningitis. Japan now offers citizens individual vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella, rather than the three-in-one MMR vaccine.
They called for an immediate halt to the MMR vaccination programme and said children should be offered single vaccinations instead. They also sought independent research to compare the health of vaccinated children in the State with unvaccinated children; a vaccine damage compensation fund; screening of children to establish whether prior conditions existed which would preclude them from vaccination; an audit of autism cases in the State, and the placing a legal obligation on Government departments providing information on vaccination to give full details of risks and side effects.
Mr Colin McCaffrey of the Informed Immunisation Network said the fact that the MMR vaccine was the only way to avail of a vaccine for either measles, mumps or rubella took no account of children who had already contracted one or more of these diseases.
"So those children who have contracted measles during the current epidemic will be given MMR to protect them against mumps and rubella but have to run the risk of damage from the measles vaccine which affords absolutely no benefit to the recipient who has now got a lifetime natural immunity from the disease itself," he said.
Most children in the State were given 27 vaccines before starting school, Mr McCaffrey said, but this varied. Children in Co Cork got 26 (the BCG is not given) and in north Co Dublin 32, due to an extra MMR jab for younger children as a result of a recent measles epidemic and the introduction of the meningitis C vaccine. He said there had been 12 suspicious deaths in Britain related to the new meningitis C vaccine.