The debate over vaccines
has hit a fever pitch,
and officials are sounding the alarm.
More states are declaring
measles outbreaks.
It has gotten so bad in some places,
parents can be fined $500
or face six months in jail
for not vaccinating their kids.
In one New York county, unvaccinated kids
are banned from appearing
in any public place.
How did we get to this point?
The needle points back to 1998.
Andrew Wakefield co-authored
a case series in "The Lancet"
suggesting the MMR vaccine
-- which prevented measles,
mumps and rubella --
could be giving children
developmental disorders
like autism. And despite
the tiny sample size, speculative
nature of the findings
and the fact that nobody
else could reproduce
those findings, the paper
received wide publicity
and MMR vaccination
rates began to slow down.
But there was a bit of
a conflict of interest.
Wakefield had been funded
by lawyers caught up
in lawsuits against
vaccine-producing companies
and in 2010, Wakefield's
paper was completely retracted
on grounds of ethical violations
and scientific misrepresentation.
And his license to practice
medicine has since been revoked.
But the damage was done.
Twenty plus years later,
many parents across the world
still don't vaccinate
their children out of fear
of the risk of autism
and measles, a disease
that was declared eliminated
in the U.S. in 2000,
continues to spread across the country.
The World Health Organization reported
that people who chose not to vaccinate
are a global health threat.
Measles is so contagious that 90 percent
of unvaccinated people
exposed will get the virus,
which can linger in the
air for up to two hours
after an infected person coughs or sneezes
and spreads through the body for days
both before and after symptoms appear.
The Wakefield fraud is likely to go down
as one of the most serious
frauds in medical history.
As anti-vaxxers open the
door for measles, mumps
and other old time diseases,
the creator of the polio
vaccine sums up the issue.
"...unless the upcoming
generations of children
are vaccinated with our
vaccine on a much larger scale
than they are now, it will
come back and the viruses
could start spreading
and circulating again,
so we must be on the alert."
An apple a day may keep the doctor away
but measles definitely needs a vaccine.
