‘MUMPS HITS UNIVERSITIES’, scream the headlines as universities set up mass vaccination programmes advising students to have the MMR jab as an epidemic of mumps threatens to sweep through campuses across the country. Figures from the Health Protection Agency show an increase in mumps from about 1,500 for all age groups in 2003 to almost 2,000 cases in only the first six months of this year. We are told that most cases of mumps are among people in their very late teens and early 20s who have not been vaccinated with the MMR and are therefore vulnerable to infection (1).