Vaccines

[haggholm]

The idiocy of anti-vaccine activists is now threatening the health and lives of people in my area. The general problem is fairly well described by a New York Times editorial (August 24):

There has been an upsurge of measles cases in the United States, mostly because of parents’ misguided fears of vaccinations. The number is still relatively small — but climbing. In the first seven months of this year, 131 cases were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than during the same period in any year since 1996. No deaths were reported, but at least 15 patients were hospitalized.

Most people have forgotten, but measles was once an uncontrolled scourge that infected three million to four million Americans annually. Victims typically suffered a rash, fever and diarrhea, but severe cases could lead to pneumonia or encephalitis. In bad epidemic years, some 48,000 Americans were hospitalized, 1,000 more were chronically disabled, and 400 to 500 died.

Then the development of effective vaccines and compulsory vaccination of schoolchildren drove the disease to the sidelines. Health authorities declared that measles had been eliminated from the United States in 2000. Only a few score cases have been reported annually in recent years, mostly imported from abroad.

Nearly all of the outbreaks this year were triggered by a mere 17 travelers or foreign visitors who contracted the virus abroad. The alarming wrinkle this year is that, once the virus is imported, it seems to be spreading to more people than before.

Outbreaks have occurred among home-schooled children who escaped the compulsory school vaccinations, and among children whose parents oppose vaccination, for philosophical and religious reasons or fear that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is dangerous. Many fear that the vaccines cause autism, a theory that has been thoroughly debunked by multiple studies and by authoritative medical organizations.

Israel, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Britain are reporting sizable outbreaks of measles among populations that have refused vaccination. Although vaccination rates remain high in this country, some experts fear that they may be starting to drop. Because it is so contagious, measles is one of the first diseases to reappear when immunization coverage declines. If confidence in all vaccines were to drop precipitously, many diseases would re-emerge and cause far more harm than could possibly result from vaccination.