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Some researchers have suggested that autism may be a new form of mercury poisoning. Studies have found high rates of autism in places where exposure to mercury is high, such as Brick Township in the US and some Japanese cities. Mercury is a neurotoxin that is used as a preservative in some vaccines.

In the US, large payments are being made to children damaged by thiomersal, the mercury preservative used in the US (though not the UK) version of the MMR vaccine. More than $1 billion has been paid out under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Programme, established in 1986 by US drug companies and the Government.

Around 12 of the 18 vaccine doses that the average American child receives before the age of two contain mercury. Petitioners claim that this adds up to almost 30 times the level considered safe for an adult. In 2000, a study by the American Centres for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that three-month-old babies exposed to 63 micrograms of mercury were two-and-a- half times more likely to develop autism.

Mercury is not used in MMR in Britain, but it is present in some other vaccines. Dr Richard Halvorsen, a London GP, believes that “there is potential for interaction between medical interventions — mercury and MMR may somehow be co-factors in triggering autism. At the moment there is no other sensible explanation for the massive increase in autism.”

Last year the Department of Health asked UK vaccine manufacturers to stop using mercury “where feasible”, but a spokesman said it had set no timetable and will not be monitoring the manufacturers’ response.

Health officials generally seem more interested in discrediting scientists than in investigating whether health is really at risk. Some of the studies cited by the Government in its contention that MMR is safe simply look at the old case notes from the children with autism. They do not examine patients. Most of the research does not compare children who have had MMR with those who have not, nor does it compare children before and after MMR vaccination.

Responding to criticism from the Government’s Public Health Service Laboratory last month, Professor Singh said: “If they enter their same old data in the statistical equation they will continue to find the same old answer, ie, there is no possibility of a connection between MMR and autistic regression. I do not wish to show disrespect towards them, but please do me a favour and ask them what new research they have done to discredit my research. The answer will be none.”

Some of the other studies cited by government have been linked to vaccine manufacturers. A Finnish study which claimed to prove that there was no link between MMR and autism was paid for by Merck, the US vaccine manufacturer. Last month, the Department of Health announced that it had given £300,000 to fund a study that would attempt to copy Dr Wakefield’s research. Campaigners have since discovered that one of the lead members of the team, Dr Phil Minor, is retained by Glaxo-SmithKline, Britain’s biggest MMR manufacturer. Dr Minor was also a member of the Medical Research Council’s review body into autism which concluded last year that there was “no evidence” to support a link. A third of the members of the UK Committee on Safety of Medicines, which has advised that the triple MMR is safe, have declared personal or non-personal links with drug companies that make the vaccine.

Dr Richard Nicholson, of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, says that the Government prefers scientists who have already made up their minds. “If you’ve got people funded by government who for years have been shouting from the rooftops to anybody who will listen that there is no link between MMR and autism, how much credence do you give the results? Why does the Government think it is worth spending money on this kind of research unless it wants it for propaganda purposes?” Lord Clement-Jones, Liberal Democrat spokesman in the House of Lords and vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Autism, feels similarly frustrated. “The argument has got extremely theological,” he says, “and has gone well beyond the point where people are discussing the facts.”

The Government has had a long time to get to grips with these issues and to prevent the slide into emotion. In the mid-1990s, two men raised their own concerns privately with the Department of Health about MMR in the hope that the Department would investigate and prevent a health scare. One was Dr Andrew Wakefield, who was subsequently rubbished by government and accused of being a selfpublicist.

The other was Richard Barr, a partner in one of the law firms that is co-ordinating the claims of more than a thousand families who believe their children have developed autism as a result of receiving MMR.

“In 1996,” says Barr in a recent letter to The Lancet, “I became so concerned about what seemed to be happening that I wrote to the chairman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines offering to make available the medical records and other information about children who had apparently been affected by the vaccine. My offer was put to the Government on three occasions but was turned down.” It is not clear why the Department of Health was so reluctant to investigate. But under pressure, officials eventually made a small concession. They agreed to send questionnaires to Barr’s list of parents about their children’s symptoms, although it is not clear how they expected this to shed any new light on the matter.