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tree_and_leaf
The British measles vaccination disaster has been due only in small part to Dr. Wakefield’s claims, or even to the media. What insured it was the hardening of the NHS and political leadership on the MMR vaccine. The fear raised by Dr. Wakefield was that a multiple vaccination would have a violent impact on a child’s developing body. That fear was, I would think, fed by folk memories of such things as the effect of “the needle”, multiple vaccinations brutally delivered to conscripts in the world war and after, which according to legend would knock out battalions of fit young men for weeks. The obvious remedy was to make the vaccinations available individually for parents who wanted them that way; many of whom, indeed, spent their own money and time doing so on their own initiative. Instead of which, the bureaucratic-political complex (which has always been the most poisonous element in England) not only insisted on MMR and MMR alone, but actually made individual vaccination impossible and penalized those who resorted to it. Why? For no better reason than MMR is administratively convenient. To chase up children and families for three separate injections takes time and patience, all things the modern NHS has no desire to spare. So it is MMR or nothing. Well, guess what? It has been nothing. After all, why should parents be allowed to make even the slightest choice about their children, if that choice incommodates their betters?
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