Dangerous talk about vaccines
JOHN Gray (Feedback, July 10) is either profoundly naïve or deliberately mischievous.
He inaccurately lumps together immunisation programmes, the Covid pandemic and climate change as “scams”.
There is zero evidence to support that for any of them.
I spent all my working life seeking to prevent the ravages of infectious diseases. Vaccines have saved millions of lives and avoided even more serious complications.
I grew up in the 1950s when it was still common to see children with leg irons who had been crippled by polio, a disease now eliminated from Britain; smallpox, a terrible killer, now eradicated; childhood bacterial meningitis and cervical cancer are now less likely. All thanks to vaccines.
vaccines get introduced into the UK without the most careful scrutiny by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination & Immunisation (JCVI) based on peer-reviewed studies.
Vaccines can have side-effects and the JVCI ensures that, to be included in the UK schedule, the benefits vastly outweigh the risks.
In the face of the global Covid pandemic, urgent progress on vaccines was paramount.
Appropriate controlled trials were done and clearly the vaccines were highly effective and saved countless lives.
Yes, rare cases of significant side effects came to light, but this rightly led to rapid modifications to the vaccine programme to minimise risks without compromising the benefits.
Misleading vaccine scares can cause huge damage. In 1998, a paper published by Dr Andrew Wakefield purporting to show a link between MMR vaccine and autism led to a worldwide fall in vaccine uptake, with ensuing deaths and disability from a resurgence of infections.
The paper was subsequently shown to contain falsified data and Wakefield was struck off.
Paraphrasing the WW2 slogan, “careless talk about vaccines costs lives”.
I’m unable to find evidence of the papers that Mr Gray claims to have written on vaccines and his description of how vaccines work is absurd and dangerous.
Rather than indulging in conspiracy fantasies, I suggest Mr Gray puts his energy into campaigning against genuine causes for concern such as the excessive profits made by some pharmaceutical companies.
TERRY RIORDAN