Please Don't Make MMR Compulsory

Yesterday the papers reported that Sir Sandy Macara, the former chairman of the British Medical Association, has called for MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) immunisation to be made compulsory for any child starting school in the UK. Apparently the government has also been seriously looking into this policy as a way of increasing the MMR uptake in the UK.

Here's my take on this. I support vaccination and I plan to have Cave Baby vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella when she is a year old. She has received all the usual vaccinations thus far. In my judgement, the benefits of vaccination outweight the risks of complications resulting from immunisation. I am fortunate that I do not have to fear my daughter dying from typhoid, tuberculosis or diptheria. These diseases have virtually vanished because of immunisation.

I myself suffered from measles and mumps during childhood: I can remember them, and they were both very unpleasant illnesses, but thankfully nowhere near life threatening. Western medicine is very good at dealing with these illnesses and in this country few people die from them. But serious complications do occur and, particularly in developing countries, people die from measles.

The MMR/autism connection has been discredited. I would urge anybody who still believes that there is a connection, to read the academic literature themselves. Or read this article by Good Enough Mum, who is a GP and a mother of a child with an autistic spectrum disorder. It is easy to be swayed by the testimonials of individual parents whose children are affected by autism, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the autism is related to the MMR vaccination. Autism symptoms have to emerge at some point: by pure coincidence, a certain proportion of parents will notice them soon after the MMR jab. Unfortunately, too many of these parents then conclude that the immunisation was responsible.

It is perhaps easy to take the view that measles and mumps are so rare these days that immunisation is unecessary. If everybody took that view, the diseases would quickly become common again. So I feel my decision to immunise is best for my child but also beneficial for the rest of society. Taking a global perspective, Europe's low MMR vaccination rate means that we are an exporter of measles to the rest of the world: we are responsible for causing outbreaks of measles in other countries. It is all very well if we take measles to a country with good healthcare and nutrition, but by exporting cases of measles to developing countries we bring about deaths.

I would concede that there is perhaps something to be said for delaying vaccinations. It seems intuitively wrong to overload a young baby's immune system with a variety of diseases, even if they have been reduced to weak strains. But that is a separate debate.

Having said all of this in support of the MMR vaccine, I would be strongly opposed to any move by the government to make it compulsory for all schoolchildren (as is the case in the US). In this country the government has historically allowed parents to make their own decisions about their own children's upbringing. Whilst I might disagree with parents who choose not to vaccinate, I recognise their right to make their own decisions based on their own priorities and experience. The government can campaign for us to vaccinate, but forcing us to do it would be one step too far. If they did, I think there would suddenly be a lot of parents choosing to home educate. So please, UK government, invest time and money into educating parents about vaccination but do not - for a moment - think that it is acceptable for you to dictate how we raise our children.