To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the answer of 18 February, Official Report, column 111–12, how many of the 483 reported suspected adverse reactions to immunisation in 1991 were serious.

One hundred and fifty nine.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the answer of 18 February, Official Report, column 111–12 if he will list the research studies which show that the deaths to which he referred are temporally not causally related to immunisation.

The United States Institute of Medicine has recently published a detailed review of studies of vaccine adverse events titled "Adverse Effects of Pertussis and Rubella Vaccines". The report concludes:

there was insufficient evidence to indicate a causal relationship between Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus (DPT) vaccine and aseptic meningitis, chronic neurological damage, erythema multiforme, Guillain Barre syndrome, haemolytic anaemia, juvenile diabetes, learning disabilities, peripheral mononeuropathy or thrombocytopenia, and rubella vaccine and radiculoneuritis and other neuropathies or thrombocytopenia purpura:

that the evidence does not indicate a causal relationship between DPT vaccine and infantile spasms, hypsarrhythmia, Reye Syndrome or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

The full bibliography can be made available. Thirty-nine references to studies on SIDS and DTP are listed in that publication.In this country, deaths reported in association with mumps, measles and rubella have been studied carefully by the clinicians involved, and no causal relationship established.