My hope is that parents with children who are confused about the safety of child vaccinations will read the information on these pages. There has been so much misleading information in the press about the safety of the MMR vaccine over the past several years that it is easy to understand why a parent would be confused.

The first two paragraphs of a 20 May 2003 Reuters Health Information article titled, "Media Mislead Britons on MMR-Autism Link" explains very clearly why parents are confused. The article said, "Media stories about the safety of the MMR vaccine left more than half of the British public with the wrong impression that scientists are evenly divided over whether the vaccine is linked to autism, researchers said on Monday. The vast majority of scientists stand behind the safety of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, but the tendency of reporters to give equal space to both sides of the debate meant many people thought there was equal evidence for each view, said Professor Justin Lewis and colleagues." This research was taken from Cardiff University's journalism and media school who polled more than 1,000 people twice during 2002. They also monitored MMR coverage in two television news programs, nine newspapers and one radio program during the same year.

In my case, the issue was much more than just MMR. I wanted my child vaccinated against all of the known childhood illnesses. This includes Diptheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Polio, Hib., Meningitis C, and MMR.

In this book you will find a collection of quotes from news articles and medical journals that I collected over the years. They helped me understand more about the MMR vaccination, and I hope you find them useful as well.