Michael Fumento

The only serious harm associated with the mumps-measles-rubella (MMR) vaccine is the risk to the health of children who don't receive it, an international team of investigators announced today.

"In particular we conclude that all the major unintended events, such as triggering Crohn's disease or autism, were suspected on the basis of unreliable evidence," said Vittorio Demicheli, M.D., of the Servizo Sovrazonale di Epidemiologia here and his colleagues in a systematic review from the Cochrane Collaboration. The Cochrane Collaboration is an international non-profit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide. It produces systematic reviews of healthcare interventions that are considered the gold standard in the business.

On the other hand, said the Cochrane group, "Mumps, measles and rubella are serious diseases that can lead to potentially fatal illness, disability and death."

As I wrote early last year, the idiocy over autism and the MMR probably wouldn't exist but for a tiny yet massively-publicized British study that turned out to have been paid for by trial lawyers who -- you got it -- were suing vaccine makers. In fact, some of the children in the study were their clients! When the news got out, the chief author was fired (he now works for the vaccine conspiracy nuts), the medical journal disavowed the study, and the co-authors also disavowed their participation. None of which mattered a bit to the conspiracy-theorists, who prize "real life" X-Files episodes over children's health and blasted me with more hate mail than I'd received on any subject to date.