JOHN HUMPHRYS: Measles blinded my father as a boy. Now, it’s making a deadly comeback thanks to shameful propaganda from the moronic anti-vaxxers

It was one of those rare perfect winter days. The snow had stopped falling during the night, the sky had cleared and the streets were coated in a crisp white layer reflecting the bright sun. 

A perfect day for small boys to throw snowballs at each other.

My father was desperate to be one of those boys. Instead he was shut in his bedroom, the curtains tightly drawn, forbidden on pain of indescribable punishment to leave his room.

But then his mother shouted up the stairs that she had to pop out to buy some food: ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes. Stay in bed… or else!’

But of course he didn’t. Five minutes after she’d left he was out with the other boys having a whale of a time. He was to pay for it dearly. 

That snowball fight in the back streets of Cardiff a few years after the Great War reached its bloody end would change the course of his life.

John Humphrys’ father (pictured, right) went blind as a result of a bout of measles

‘What’s gone so horribly wrong in the past few years is that the anti-vaxxers, with their moronic obsessions that vaccination is the eighth deadly sin, are winning the propaganda war’, writes John Humphrys

The UK Health Security Agency warns that the poor vaccine uptake in London means we may soon be looking at an outbreak of between 40,000 and 160,000 cases

If MMR is to continue being as successful in defeating measles as it has been for so many years, we must all get the jab

Measles is a highly contagious, and sometime fatal, disease that is capable of infecting nine in 10 unvaccinated children

How do the MMR vaccines work? 

The MMR vaccine is a safe and effective combined vaccine.

It protects against three illnesses: measles, mumps and rubella.

The highly infectious conditions can easily spread between unvaccinated people.

The conditions can lead to serious problems including meningitis, hearing loss and problems during pregnancy.

Two doses of the MMR vaccine provide the best protection against measles, mumps and rubella.

The NHS advises anyone who has not had two doses of the MMR vaccine to ask their GP for a vaccination appointment.

Two doses of the jab protects around 99 per cent of people against measles and rubella, while around 88 per cent of people are protected against mumps. 

Source: NHS 

The reason Dad had been confined to his room was that he had measles. Even in those far-off days more than a century ago everyone knew what measles could do to your eyes if you were exposed to bright light. 

At its worst it could make you blind. Which is exactly what it did to my father.

His sight returned gradually over the years but much too little and too late, in those hard times, for him to get a proper education and never enough for him to drive a car. 

As he grew older, it deteriorated again. He died blind. His life had been blighted by one of the most common childhood diseases.

But now, thank God, we have conquered that disease. No child in this country should ever again have to suffer as my father and countless others did in his day. 

So why, in the name of all that’s holy, are we putting that massive medical advance at risk? Because that is just what we are doing as I write, and it is nothing short of shameful.

Senior doctors have warned that a major measles outbreak is looming in Britain this winter which could lead to ‘a lot of deaths’ and would be ‘disastrous’ for the NHS.

This is not a case of scaremongering or health officials trying desperately to cover their backs in case, just in case, something bad happens.

It is already happening. Outbreaks of measles are being reported in all our major cities including London, Sheffield, Leicester and Cardiff.

But why now? After all, I have children and grandchildren ranging in age from their teens to their 50s and none of them has had measles. 

Nor will they. For the very simple reason that they have been vaccinated against it. And the vaccine worked. Brilliantly.

The graph shows the percentage of five-year-olds in England who have had both doses of the MMR vaccine. While the national average is 85.7 per cent, the figure drops as low as 59 per cent in Hackney, north London

READ MORE: Revealed: Areas of England most vulnerable to measles outbreaks

No, what’s gone so horribly wrong in the past few years is that the anti-vaxxers, with their moronic obsessions that vaccination is the eighth deadly sin, are winning the propaganda war.

The experts in the field are so worried about what is happening that they have drawn up new guidelines for NHS staff dealing with children who have any sort of chest or lung infections. They tell them: ‘Think measles’.

And the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has taken the unprecedented step of telling all doctors and nurses to check the medical records of all children arriving at hospital to make sure they have been vaccinated.

Any child showing symptoms of measles such as a fever and cough, should be immediately isolated. The staff themselves must wear personal protective equipment.

Ah . . . the need for PPE. Remind you of anything?

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Yes, it seems like only yesterday that the nation was reeling under the onslaught of a virus that at one stage threatened to kill us in our millions.

We were saved from the worst not by the politicians preening in front of the cameras or Rishi Sunak’s staggeringly expensive follies such as ‘eat out to help out’ schemes, but by brilliant scientists who produced . . . you’ve guessed . . . a vaccine. 

A vaccine that, like the MMR jab, worked superbly. I am one of the vast number who had all three jabs the moment they became available and escaped totally unscathed.

Measles may not have the devastating impact COVID did, but the World Health Organisation says it is arguably the most infectious disease in existence and has warned of a ‘perfect storm’ for a large-scale outbreak.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health shares that concern. It says the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella) should be vigorously promoted to anyone who has not had both doses.

Professor Helen Bedford, of University College London, agrees.

NHS England data released earlier this year shows that MMR vaccine uptake is just 89.2 per cent for one dose in two year olds, and to 85.7 per cent for both jabs among five year olds

The map shows the number of measles cases per region of England in the first six months of 2023. London has been the worst hit (85), followed by the South East (12) and Yorkshire and the Humber (8)

Official data for October to December 2022 shows the areas most vulnerable to a potential measles outbreak with over a quarter of children in London missing out on the MMR jab

She says: ‘If we get more cases, we’re going to see a lot of very ill children and a lot of hospitalisations.

‘People still die from measles in the UK but if numbers come to fruition, then we will see a lot of deaths. It’s not just some mild childhood illness’.

An extra worry is that this is the time of year when the NHS and GPs come under the maximum pressure because of winter surges in respiratory infections such as flu and, yes, covid.

The president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Dr Camilla Kingdon, has this sombre warning: ‘To add another highly contagious and dangerous disease into the mix would be disastrous and could bring our already fragile system to its knees’.

As with most vaccines there is a ‘but’. If MMR is to continue being as successful in defeating measles as it has been for so many years, we must all get the jab and, vitally, make sure our children do too.

Anything less than a 95 per cent uptake gives the virus the chance to spread. You can’t just get a high uptake of the vaccine and then let it drop — it has to stay there because it is so frighteningly infectious. 

The latest data for the most vulnerable group, small children, says it is only 85 per cent. And the data also says cases are now being reported among teenagers and young adults.

The UK Health Security Agency warns that the poor vaccine uptake in London means we may soon be looking at an outbreak of between 40,000 and 160,000 cases.

So why, in God’s name, aren’t we keeping vaccination levels where they should be?

IS ANDREW WAKEFIELD’S DISCREDITED AUTISM RESEARCH TO BLAME FOR LOW MEASLES VACCINATION RATES?

In 1995, gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet showing children who had been vaccinated against MMR were more likely to have bowel disease and autism.

He speculated that being injected with a ‘dead’ form of the measles virus via vaccination causes disruption to intestinal tissue, leading to both of the disorders.

After a 1998 paper further confirmed this finding, Wakefield said: ‘The risk of this particular syndrome [what Wakefield termed ‘autistic enterocolitis’] developing is related to the combined vaccine, the MMR, rather than the single vaccines.’

At the time, Wakefield had a patent for single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines, and was therefore accused of having a conflict of interest.

Nonetheless, MMR vaccination rates in the US and the UK plummeted, until, in 2004, the editor of The Lancet Dr Richard Horton described Wakefield’s research as ‘fundamentally flawed’, adding he was paid by a group pursuing lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.

The Lancet formally retracted Wakefield’s research paper in 2010.

Three months later, the General Medical Council banned Wakefield from practising medicine in Britain, stating his research had shown a ‘callous disregard’ for children’s health.

On January 6 2011, The British Medical Journal published a report showing that of the 12 children included in Wakefield’s 1995 study, at most two had autistic symptoms post vaccination, rather than the eight he claimed.

At least two of the children also had developmental delays before they were vaccinated, yet Wakefield’s paper claimed they were all ‘previously normal’.

Further findings revealed none of the children had autism, non-specific colitis or symptoms within days of receiving the MMR vaccine, yet the study claimed six of the participants suffered all three.

The answer is a mixture of woeful ignorance, blind prejudice and simple stupidity. Mix into that toxic cohort the self-styled experts who are brilliant at manipulating public opinion to enhance their own profile and enlarge their own bank accounts.

Then stir into that mix all those idiots whose natural instinct is to search for some great conspiracy — and bingo! You have the perfect environment.

I first came into contact with the most notorious anti-vaxxer of them all when I was presenting the BBC’s Today programme 20 years ago. 

He was Andrew Wakefield. Utterly charming, very bright and seemingly passionate about his cause. He was also a fraud. 

One of his most outrageous claims was that the MMR jab caused autism in children. It didn’t and his ‘evidence’ was bogus.

He was effectively drummed out of this country and, bizarrely, found fame and fortune in the United States.

His greatest admirer was a chap called Donald Trump. You may remember President Trump’s performance during the covid crisis.

In April 2020 one of the ‘cures’ he recommended was injecting or drinking bleach.

Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about the anti-vaxxers and the threat they pose to society when diseases as dangerous as measles are at large?

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