Shattering the myth of MMR and autism — by a mum who REALLY knows
. . . because both of her sons have the condition — and Stephanie is adamant there can be no connection, as her powerful testimony reveals
Stephanie Nimmo is aware that, by speaking out in favour of vaccinations, she will be hit by a furious backlash from the anti-vax community.
‘every time i stick my head above the parapet to express my frustration with those who choose not to vaccinate, i am trolled for speaking out,’ says the 51-year-old writer and mother-of-four. ‘i’ve been called “selfish”. i’ve had middle-class mothers saying “s***w you!”. But i don’t care, i really don’t.
‘the anti-vaccination movement has got bigger and more dangerous in the past few years and my family has been affected in so many ways. the amount of misinformation and scaremongering about vaccines is astonishing, and i’ve gone from being incredulous to feeling angry that it’s spreading like wildfire.’
Stephanie, from South-West London, has more reasons than most to support vaccination. She is a measles survivor herself and has lived with a lifelong disability as a result of contracting the illness when she was younger.
‘it’s one of my earliest memories,’ she says. ‘i was desperately ill. i had a banging headache, a sore throat and rash and i spent a week lying in a darkened room, unable to bear any light or loud noise. My mother was a nurse who wonders if she brought the highly-contagious virus home from a ward.
‘though vaccines were available in 1972, they weren’t given routinely and certainly not in the part of South Wales where i grew up. But my mother had seen children die from it.
‘two years later, the doctors realised i’d become deaf in one ear. i’d been back and forth to the Gp since having measles because i’d been complaining that my ear “felt funny”.
‘Because i was so young, i learned to live with it. When my mum found out, she burst into tears. Children don’t just “go deaf”. it was the measles.’
Three decades later, there was no doubt in Stephanie’s mind that vaccinating her children was ‘a no-brainer’.
‘Our first son, theo, was born in 1997, around the same time that Dr andrew Wakefield’s now discredited report on the links with MMr and autism was in the news and i remember mothers in my nCt [national Childbirth trust] group talking about whether they should go ahead and vaccinate.
‘But for myself and my husband [andy, a management consultant], there was never any question. andy was pro-science and we read up on it and put our faith in the doctors.
‘no one can say every vaccine is 100 per cent safe, but the science made sense. another mother in the nCt group was also deaf in one ear as a result of mumps and we both vaccinated our children and thought nothing more about it.
‘two years later, andy and i vaccinated our daughter, Xanthe, and did it again with our second son, Jules, in 2002.’
even when Stephanie and andy’s sons were diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum some years later — both have asperger’s, a form of high-functioning autism — she was quick to dismiss any link.
‘i’ve done so much research and there are so many holes in the argument that MMr and autism are linked,’ Stephanie says. ‘ there’s absolutely no connection. We’d noticed signs of autism in theo even before he had the vaccine, though we didn’t know what they were.
‘he always had colic, was a bad sleeper and later on, developed obsessions about routines. even theo says it’s an insult to people like him to say his autism is a result of a vaccine, rather than just the person he is. he says he’d give the vaccine to his own children as well.’
But it was when their fourth daughter, Daisy, was born in 2004, that the issue of vaccination came sharply into focus for the family.
‘Daisy had a very rare genetic disease, Costello syndrome, which caused her entire gastro-intestinal system to fail,’ says Stephanie.
‘She spent most of her life on powerful immunosuppressants and steroids and as a result could not receive live vaccines because her immune system was so compromised. now, more than ever, we were aware of how heavily she relied on the “herd immunity” of others who are vaccinated to protect our vulnerable child. remembering how badly i had suffered — and i had been a healthy child — i knew that measles would kill my daughter.
‘at first, we weren’t too worried. thanks to vaccinations, this country had eradicated so many diseases: measles, mumps, whooping cough etc. Science solved the problem.’
But as the anti-vax movement gained momentum, cases of measles began to rise and the fear that her daughter would get severely ill became a reality.
‘We were scared,’ says Stephanie. ‘When i heard of a measles outbreak in South Wales about eight years ago where a child had died, i thought: “Wow, are people really putting their own children and other more vulnerable people at risk?”
‘We’ve become so complacent about diseases like measles, and we don’t take them seriously because we don’t see them any more. But it can be devastating for anyone with a weakened immune system.
‘andy and i made sure we never used public transport with Daisy, and when we were out in public, it was always at the back of my mind that she might not be protected.’
the issue was compounded when, tragically, andy was diagnosed with Stage 4 terminal cancer in 2014. ‘Suddenly, i’d gone from having one person who was vulnerable thanks to their immune system, to two,’ says Stephanie.
‘andy’s chemo wiped out his immune system to the point where everyone had to wear masks around him at certain times during treatment. We had “windows of wellness” where we could enjoy time as a family, but we were aware that something like a simple trip to the shops could result in him catching a disease like measles and dying.
‘in the end, we had a year together, which i’m grateful for and again, it’s down to medicine and drugs which gave us that time together.’
in a devastating twist, Daisy also succumbed to further illness and in 2017 Stephanie was left with an unimaginable choice. ‘ i had to make the decision to turn off the life support system that was keeping my 12-year- old daughter alive,’ she says.
‘i knew that medical science had kept her alive and i knew that we were lucky to have 12 wonderful years with her, but the bottom line was that it was her time and i had to make the decision to let her go.
‘When parents say they struggle about whether to vaccinate children because they are worried about the effects, i understand. But that’s what parenting is about: difficult decisions.
‘it was medical science which kept Daisy alive for so long. Without it, she may not even have survived her birth. it’s so easy for people to take for granted what we have now, but it’s thanks to medical science that children are not dying of measles and mumps any more.’
Stephanie now helps to educate those parents who are worried
about vaccinations. ‘ I know that whatever I say or write, many anti-vaxxers will never be swayed. They send me so-called “evidence” which is pseudo-science at best and deeply flawed. I find it ironic that a lot of the time it’s middle- class parents from “nappy valley” areas like my own who have decided not to vaccinate. ‘How privileged have they become that they can take things like this for granted when children in previous generations had no choice?
‘In poorer countries, mothers queue for hours to be vaccinated but here, we say we don’t want to be putting “toxins” in our children. I have to wonder what they would do if their child got something like cancer? Would they be happy to trust the doctors with their drugs then?
‘I hope any parent of an unvaccinated child doesn’t have to watch their child suffer, develop a disability or worse. I’ve watched my child die and I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone.’
STEPHANIE NIMMO is the author of Was This In The Plan? (Hashtag Press, £9.35).