Short abstract
A forthcoming drama about the MMR controversy has angered many doctors. A general practitioner and two child health experts, who have all seen a preview, explain why
Channel 5, 15 December at 9 pm
Hear the Silence attempts to be to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine what the campaigning film Cathy Come Home was to homelessness. However, it fails in that it takes a blatantly one sided approach to the issue.
On one level the film is an accurate portrayal of the extreme difficulties of looking after a child with autism and the obstacles in the way of getting appropriate educational provision. It shows the unbearable strain that having a disabled child can put on a family. Those of us who have not been through it can barely begin to understand the enormous stresses encountered, even in simple everyday activities such as shopping. If it had stopped here it might have been a worthy, moving, and possibly successful film. However, its aim is much more ambitious—to show that the “truth” about a supposed link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been suppressed.
We see how, when the mother of an autistic child tries to seek first a diagnosis and then an explanation for his problems, she encounters totally unsympathetic doctors. That is until she meets an adult gastroenterologist, Dr Andrew Wakefield. She describes to him, as she did to previous doctors, how her son appeared to regress after his first dose of MMR and then again after the second. At last someone takes notice of her and believes her when she says her son's problems are caused by the vaccine. To say this is a blatant caricature worthy of Hogarth or Rowlandson at the peak of their careers would be an understatement. Short of giving most of the doctors horns and tails and Dr Wakefield a halo, little more could have been done to distinguish the supposed goodies from the baddies.
Figure 1.
Hear the Silence: “grossly one-sided”
Credit: CHANNEL 5
The gastroenterologist then tries to establish whether a link really does exist between “autistic enterocolitis” and the MMR vaccine. All those who disagree are portrayed as either uncaring and heartless or establishment lackeys.
This docudrama is much more drama that documentary, but to have put both sides of the argument would have spoilt the crusading effect of the film. There is no mention of a commentary alongside Wakefield's original Lancet paper highlighting numerous flaws in it or a letter from some members of Wakefield's team restating that they had not proven a causal link between the vaccine and autism and bowel problems. Nor is there any mention of the fact that at one time Dr Wakefield believed he had proven a link between the single measles vaccine and adult Crohn's disease (subsequently disproven by a number of researchers, including himself). The latter would have made a mockery of his suggestion that the single measles vaccine should have been used instead of MMR. Also absent are the numerous epidemiological studies showing no link.
All this film can do is raise anxieties. If this film results in a further fall in uptake of the vaccine, will the producers consider that a success? And if children are avoidably damaged by measles or mumps, will they also take credit for that?