A child who developed severe epilepsy after receiving the
                                        MMR jab has been found to have measles virus from the
                                        vaccine in his brain.

                                        The results of tests conducted recently have been
                                        revealed by the 13-year-old boy's mother. She says that
                                        she has decided to go public in order to push the
                                        Government to take the plight of children allegedly
                                        damaged by the three-in-one measles, mumps and
                                        rubella vaccination more seriously.

                                        Scientists say that the implications of the discovery are
                                        difficult to assess without further research. However, it
                                        raises new questions about the triple inoculation, which
                                        has been dogged by controversy since Andrew Wakefield,
                                        a former consultant at the Royal Free Hospital in London,
                                        linked it with a new syndrome of bowel disease and
                                        autism in children.

                                        The boy's mother, who has asked to remain anonymous,
                                        told The Telegraph yesterday that her son had developed
                                        an allergic rash eight days after he received the MMR
                                        vaccination when he was 15 months old. He then
                                        progressed to have 10 to 12 seizures every month.

                                        In the summer of 1998, however, he descended into
                                        "status epilepticus" - continuous convulsions - and
                                        surgeons at a London hospital decided that he needed
                                        emergency brain surgery to save his life. It was at this
                                        point that a brain biopsy was taken.

                                        The woman, who is suing the manufacturers of the MMR
                                        vaccine on behalf of her son, declined to say where the
                                        biopsy had been tested for the measles virus but
                                        indicated that this had been done in a reputable
                                        laboratory.

                                        She had been shocked to receive the test results
                                        indicating that vaccine-strain measles virus had been
                                        found, she said. She had also learnt that samples from
                                        her son's bowel, taken in 1997 because he had digestive
                                        problems, had tested positive for vaccine-strain virus.

                                        After the operation when he was nine, her son had had to
                                        relearn "virtually everything", she said. His personality
                                        changed and he was no longer able to attend mainstream
                                        school, although he had very recently been free of
                                        seizures.

                                        "Now with this new information I am very concerned," the
                                        boy's mother said. "Is it over for him or not? No one
                                        knows and this is why all these children - not just my son
                                        - need to be acknowledged rather than have the
                                        continuous stream of blanket denials that have been
                                        issued by the Department of Health."

                                        British specialists investigating MMR were reluctant to
                                        comment publicly on the case last night. One cautioned
                                        that it was theoretically possible that the boy had
                                        developed a vaccine-related condition that was more
                                        commonly caused by a natural measles virus infection. 

                                        If this was the case, he said, then MMR would actually
                                        help to protect the wider population from similar
                                        infections. However, he added: "We do not know what this
                                        result means."

                                        The Department of Health has told parents they have no
                                        need to be concerned about MMR - a position supported
                                        by leading medical bodies worldwide.