THE articles on the MMR vaccine (News and Focus, last week) cause me some concern. We do not need an inquiry (ie more debate) but more research. It is in the national interest to use MMR. However, it may not be in your personal interest to use MMR if, as a consequence, it is your child who (may) become autistic.

Unfortunately the government has no incentive to put the necessary money into the research, particularly when they have put their honour on the line — as they did with salmonella in eggs, mad cow disease and foot and mouth.

Dr Richard Lowe
Newtown Linford
Leicestershire

FLAWED: According to your report on Wakefield’s MMR work, scientific studies authored by researchers with possible conflicts of interest are “fatally flawed”. So where does that leave the studies the biotech industry claims to have done, and which the government chooses to believe, purporting to show the safety of GM crops and foods? If Wakefield’s work is to be thrown out on this basis, so must GM crops.

In truth, identifying a conflict of interest only flags up the possibility of bias. Before a study can be dismissed, the quality of the research must be examined and found wanting. This has not happened with Wakefield’s study. Epidemiological studies cannot prove cause and effect, even in the most obvious cases such as smoking and lung cancer; they can only point to an association. Wakefield has done this. Now he and other researchers must take the work further before MMR can be consigned to the dustbin or given a clean bill of health.

Claire Robinson
Chagford, Devon

INFERTILITY: Until 2000, my overall immunisation uptake was consistently at 93%, until Dr Wakefield’s MMR views hit the fan. Since then, we struggle to achieve 78%.

What hasn’t materialised in the press is the increasing reports of mumps in men aged 17-20 years, a proportion of whom will be rendered infertile.

Dr Bharat Nanavati
Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire

RISK: MMR concerns began long before the report that is the subject of so much government and Lancet pro-MMR spin. As parents of a child born in 1997 we were concerned with the number of cases of autism in children we were encountering.