Leading Article: Give parents the choice on MMR

WHOEVER HEARD of a drugs company refusing to meet a rush for a profitable drug? That is exactly what Pasteur Merieux MSD has done in discontinuing the supply of its measles vaccine. Ostensibly, the decision was made because the demand for the drug was too great' to say the least, this does not sound credible.

Despite denials from all concerned, it seems much more plausible that the company has been forced by pressure from the Department of Health to end the supply of the drug. The alternative would have been to continue watching parents stampede away from the combined version of the treatment (MMR), which combines a measles vaccine with those for mumps and rubella. The single vaccines, given over three years, are more expensive overall to the NHS; concerns of cost must have entered into the equation.

The medical establishment has argued that the original research, on which parents' fears are based, was alarmist. The Medical Research Council claims that the apparent correlation between MMR inoculation and the diseases to which it has been linked is a coincidence. Autism does appear at about the same age as the vaccinations are given, but the evidence is that this was always the case. No one should panic, especially as the result of frightening parents might be increasing deaths from measles, mumps and rubella.

But parents are worried, and doctors have been wrong before. Whatever the Medical Council says, it is their concerns that matter; they have a right to decide which treatments their children receive. It would cost very little for the NHS to give parents the choices they want. Certainly, the money spent on MMR would be nothing compared to what the Government is spending in its attack on waiting-lists. And for the NHS to be humanised, by responding to the wishes of patients, would do it much more good than all the waiting-list targets in the world.