I REFER to the letter from Dr Robert Aston: Our only motive is to protect your health (BEN, August 10).

Dr Aston's comments were directed towards groups like ours, and JABS is the largest group in the UK, campaigning for safer vaccines and justice for vaccine damaged children.

As Dr Aston knows, my youngest son has been severely brain-damaged, we believe, as a direct result of the MMR vaccination he received when he was 13 months old. He is also aware of other parents in his own health area with children severely disabled as a result of childhood inoculations.

I would like to make it quite clear that our group is not against vaccination, we are against damage. If there is a problem with a vaccine or a particular combination of vaccines who better to express it than the parents of children who have been on the receiving end.

The Jabs group represents over 1800 families from around the UK who believe that their children have suffered severe health problems following childhood vaccinations. The diphtheria/tetanus/

pertussis (whooping cough),

(DTP) and Measles /mumps/

rubella (MMR) combination vaccines are the most often reported to our group by worried parents.

1. Parents are usually only told of the minor side effects that might occur following vaccination, eg slight rise in temperature, which is supported by the Health Education Authority's clinic pamphlet. The pamphlet plays up the seriousness of the diseases, and plays down the possibility of serious reactions. What the GP gets is a product insert sheet direct from the vaccine pharmaceutical company, which states the minor and serious problems that have been reported to them during the production and safety trials. In the main, it is the serious adverse reactions that are reported to JABS.

2. There appears to be a massive under-reporting of serious adverse reactions to the Committee on Safety of Medicines, therefore, statistics on side effects are unsound. This view has been endorsed by the Public Health Laboratory Service in the Lancet.

3. Our group has met the most senior medical advisers and the Health Minister, Tessa Jowell, calling on them to undertake a scientific study of the 1800 children registered with JABS. The then chief medical officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, took the line that our information was anecdotal as it was coming from parents and he was prepared only to look at scientific evidence. How can anecdotal information become scientific evidence unless a credible, independent, scientific study is undertaken?

4. Vaccine damage does, of course, exist and is accepted by the Government. Following the Vaccine Damage Payment Act 1979 a vaccine damage payment unit was established as a branch of the Department of Health. We have called for the Department of Social Security Minister, Hugh Bayley, to meet pharmaceutical companies with a view to them making a financial contribution to the scheme as they do in the United States. At present a child has to be damaged at least 80pc to even be assessed by the unit for a one-off payment of £40,000. Even with this strict criteria almost 900 children have been awarded payments so far. MMR vaccine damage payments have been awarded for various adverse effects including: epilepsy, Guillain-Barre syndrome (a paralysis condition), SSPE (a brain-wasting condition), profound deafness and death.

5. Any debate on vaccine damage will have Department of Health officials and doctors quoting the massive number of doses given to children in the United States. What is never stated by UK officials is that in the US they have a National Vaccine Compensation Programme. In the last 10 years this programme has paid out over $1B in payments to vaccine damaged children. The drug companies have to contribute to the programme and up to August 1997 they had to pay an excise tax on each dose using a risk-based formula. The DTP and MMR were taxed at $4.56 and $4.44, polio vaccines at $0.29 and DT vaccines at $0.06. This must surely give an indication of which vaccines carry the highest risk of a serious adverse reaction The US administration will not pay out compensation because of "quite unfounded scare" stories.

6. Also in the US two American parent research organisations, Autism Research Institute and Cure Autism Now Foundation, have recently joined with the National Vaccine Information Centre in calling for independent studies conducted by non-Governmental researchers into the possible link between vaccines and autism.

7. With very young children it is extremely difficult to prove vaccine damage. The JABS group also has older children registered with us. In November 1994 the Department of Health announced the decision to re-vaccinate seven million schoolchildren to thwart an expected measles epidemic. The officials at the time stated that it did not matter whether the children had had the disease or a vaccine against measles before, they could all be safely re-vaccinated. The children were given the measles/rubella (MR) vaccine. After the campaign the Committee on Safety of Medicines stated that serious reactions to the MR vaccine were very rare, but then admitted that there had been 530 serious reactions. Given that the chief medical officer's figure of 'one in a million' for vaccine encephalitis is usually quoted for adverse reactions and only seven million - not 530 million - pupils were vaccinated, there appears to be something wrong with their definition of 'rare'.

The issues are very complex and difficult to summarise in a small space. Meningitis C vaccine is soon to be included in the vaccine programme. As a parent, myself, I welcome any scientific developments to reduce the incidence of serious disease. My concerns are though that in the fight to beat childhood diseases some children are being caught in friendly fire. I do not not want any child damaged by disease, but as one of the 1800 families caring for a vaccine damaged child I do not want a child damaged by a vaccine either! Playing the numbers game we have looked at the track record of both the single measles vaccine, and the combination MMR. The single measles vaccine was used in Britain for 21 years (between 1967 and 1988). We have 27 children registered with us from that period believed to have suffered severe problems. The MMR has been used for 11 years (1988 - to date). We have 1670 children registered with us from this period. The Department of Health want to offer the Meningitis C vaccines at the same time as children receive DTP+Polio+Hib meningitis vaccines or with MMR vaccines. In the doctors' magazine, 'Pulse', Dr Richard Nicholson editor of 'The Bulletin of medical Ethics' and a paediatrician said "There should be more extensive investigation, particularly if it's going to be given in combination with other vaccines."

Jackie Fletcher, JABS

Gawsworth Road

Golborne, Warrington, WA3 3RF

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