Scrapping of single rubella vaccine provokes outcry

Campaigners against the MMR inoculation reacted with outrage yesterday to plans to discontinue the manufacture of the single rubella vaccine licensed for use in Britain.

The pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline said it was to end production of the Ervevax vaccine at its factory in Belgium because there was "no market" for the product used to counteract German measles.

The announcement follows a decision by the Government last week to order the wholesale supplier, Farillon, to reduce the amount of Ervevax supplied to private clinics. The clinics have, in increasingly greater numbers, been ordering thousands of doses of the drug each month for those parents who want their children to have the MMR's three components administered separately.

Parents' concern has been fuelled by reports of possible links between the triple jab and increases in cases of autism and childhood bowel disease. An opinion poll by ICM showed yesterday that only 55 per cent of the public think the MMR jab is safe.

The official advice remains that no evidence indicates any link between MMR vaccination and bowel disease or autism. The most recent large-scale review of research quoted by the Department of Health looked at 2,000 studies and could find no link.

But campaigners persist in asserting that such epidemiological research is unlikely to pick up the small sub-group of cases in which problems are found. They are demanding that the problem group is made the subject of research.

Fuel was added to the dispute in Scotland yesterday because of news that exactly such a research project, by Edinburgh University, Edinburgh Sick Children's Hospital and the Moredun Research Institute, had been refused funding by the government-backed Medical Research Council.

Jackie Fletcher, of the pressure group Jabs, which receives 700 requests a day for information on where to get separate jabs, said of the decision to end manufacture of the single rubella vaccine: "This seems like a cynical attempt to put barriers in the way of worried parents. GlaxoSmithKline are continuing to make the vaccine for inclusion in the MMR. There is no reason why they cannot reserve some for separate doses."

One of the private clinics, Direct Health 2000, which has thousands of parents on a waiting list for single vaccines, revealed yesterday that its order for Ervevax has been cut by two thirds. Kathy Durnford, a spokeswoman, attacked the Department of Health's restrictions as "real bully-boy, Big Brother stuff". She said: "They are trying to prevent parents concerned about the wellbeing of their children having a choice."

Anger was growing against the Government, Ms Fletcher suggested. "Drugs manufacturers are just trying to maximise their profits," she said. "GlaxoSmithKline have recently applied for a licence for a 4-in-1 vaccine – the MMR plus chickenpox. So it's not in their financial interests to continue with the separate vaccine. Ministers should respond by updating the lapsed licence of another pharmaceutical company, Eventis Pasteur MSD, which is still used throughout the rest of Europe.

"Instead they are using this as an opportunity to force people into accepting the MMR," she said. "But parents are getting very angry. The Government is storing up trouble by its attitude. It could easily find that it has another poll tax riot on its hands."