How the middle-class MMR refuseniks are putting every child at risk

By Frances Childs for MailOnline

Updated: 03:10 EDT, 19 February 2009

Sipping a sludgy-looking concoction of herbs and mashed mung beans, Joanne offers me a beige lump which I have no trouble declining. It's an organic biscuit from Guadeloupe, she tells me.

Chewing on her biscuit, she shakes her head. 'I don't understand it,' she says. 'Hardly anyone can come to Silas's birthday party next month.'

For a moment, I almost feel sorry for her. With ruthless efficiency, Joanne is being shoved out of our social circle.

At risk: As the number of children who have not had the MMR jab increases, so does the likelihood of deadly measles spreading

Looking at three-year-old Silas playing on his own with his bricks, I'm tempted to tell her why. I could spell it out for her why he did not get an invitation to George's bouncy castle bash last weekend and won't be asked to come on the swimming trip that several mums are organising next week.

But in the end I simply make my excuses and leave. My three-year-old daughter Nancy won't be going to Silas's party either.

In fact, I'd come round to drop off his present because we aren't going to be seeing any more of Silas and Joanne.

They are not the only families we are cutting out of our lives. There won't be any more coffee mornings with Megan and her son Toby. We won't be going on play dates with Esther and her daughter Mimi either.

Quite simply, I don't want Nancy to have contact with Silas, Mimi and Toby because they haven't had the MMR jab, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella.

Nancy has had her jab, but she won't be fully protected until she has a booster just before going to school.

The parents of Silas, Mimi and Toby are middle class and university educated, but they are behaving like morons and turning their children into pariahs.

When measles was rife, 80 children died in a week

Until recently, measles had been eradicated in this country. But ten years ago, following research - now debunked - which appeared to link the MMR vaccine to autism, parents stopped vaccinating their children.

At first, this reaction was understandable. The autism theory was genuinely disturbing and the reaction of the medical establishment was so complacently dismissive that many reasonable people suspected a cover-up.

It didn't help matters when Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to confirm if his youngest son had been given the MMR jab.

Now, though, with eminent professors and medical research journals lining up to offer full and detailed evidence rebutting any link to autism, the continued refusal of parents to vaccinate is nothing short of criminal.

Measles is a serious illness which can lead to pneumonia and encephalitis. Last year, there were 1,348 confirmed cases in England and Wales. In the past couple of years, two children have died of it.

When I asked Joanne why she hadn't had Silas vaccinated, she looked shocked. 'I don't trust the doctors. I'm conducting my own research,' she said.

This consists of Googling herbalists and having webchats with like-minded mums.

Their alternative to vaccinating their children, she told me, is to give each other tips on concocting potions which they insist will ward off vicious childhood illnesses.

Middle-class twits like Joanne pottering around the kitchen brewing up potions would be amusing if it weren't so serious.

Let's remind ourselves of how things were when measles was rife. In March 1922, 80 children died in a single week.

I wonder what their parents would have said to women like Joanne, who are turning their backs on vaccination and relying on quacks peddling magic pills.

If contracted by a pregnant woman, measles can have devastating consequences.

Miscarriage, stillbirth, severe heart defects and deafness in the unborn child are all linked to measles.

Thirty-five years ago, my friend Angie Wright's dreams of motherhood turned to tragedy when she caught measles while visiting the doctor's surgery to have her pregnancy confirmed.

'The doctor told me to have an abortion. He said the disability would be so severe that it was the only option. I have regretted it ever since. I'm still grieving for my lost baby,' she says.

Nurseries should refuse unvaccinated children

MMR is 90 per cent effective. A booster before children begin school makes it almost 100 per cent effective.

But as more parents choose not to vaccinate their children, pre-school youngsters who have had MMR are at risk.

As the number of children who have not been immunised increases, so, too, does the likelihood of measles spreading.

'Recently, I got a letter from my daughter's nursery advising us all to get the MMR booster immediately,' says my friend Karen. Her three-year-old daughter had come into contact with not one but two children who hadn't been immunised and were possibly infected with measles.

'I was furious that other parents had been so selfish that they put other children at risk,' she says.

Karen believes nurseries should refuse to enrol children who haven't been vaccinated.

'Why should all our children be at risk because a few middle-class idiots have conspiracy theories against the medical establishment?'

In California, there is a law barring unvaccinated children from attending nursery and school. Parents face prosecution and even jail.

Now in Britain there is a growing backlash against women like Maria, who insists that spinach will protect her three-year-old son Marcus against measles.

'Vaccines are full of poisons. I can build up his immune system by ensuring he eats healthily,' she says.

In the past, she was indulged by the mums in our toddler group as slightly eccentric.

Now, though, following reports of children with measles at birthday parties mixing with pregnant women, she is being cold-shouldered by the other mothers who are appalled at the risks she is taking with all our children's health.

As I leave Joanne's house, Silas runs up to me. 'When is Nancy coming to play?' he asks.

He doesn't know that she's leaping about with several of his friends in Auntie Lou's house ten minutes' walk away.

He hasn't been invited because, as Lou said: 'I just don't want to take the risk.' I smile at him. 'Soon,' I lie. I wave and walk away.