Measles On the Rise

Our greatest medical achievement is not open-heart surgery, not penicillin, but vaccination.  Everything else is a bandaid compared to the ability to actually prevent disease.  Smallpox ravaged communities until Edward Jenner developed a vaccine which has eradicated the disease and saved countless lives.  It became possible to immunize people from the deadliest pathogens on the planet.  Since that time, we can now prevent Small Pox, Chicken Pox, Tetnus, Diptheria, Whooping Cough, Pneumococcus, Hepatitis B, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and even a vaccine against the cervical cancers caused by HPV.  Every year the number of deaths to preventable infectious diseases goes down.

Well, it did go down.  The CDC now reports that the number of cases of Measles has hit a 20 year high.  Ten years ago, measles was officially eradicated from the US (no transmission for 12 months).  Almost every case this year involves a person that was not vaccinated or without a vaccination history.  The same story happens for many of the diseases.  The high school I taught at was hit by Whooping Cough which is prevented by the P in the Tdap vaccination you should get every 10 years.  Thank fully the number of deaths stays low, because we do have the bandaids of modern medicine.  But eradicated diseases should not be making come backs.

I lay all of the blame on the Anti-Vax crowd.  Concerned that vaccinations, or the components within the vaccination, cause the cause of autism, Jenny McCarthy and others have led a crusade to scare people from vaccinating their children.  Somehow, it worked.  To some extent, their children are still protected from the worst diseases as smallpox and polio have been eradicated.  This is called herd immunity.  But some diseases still linger in the US from anti-vaxers and immigrants coming from places without vaccinations.  There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism.  None.  Well, there was one published paper, that the author had to retract as he admitted to cheating with the numbers.  So, we're back to none.

It is far better to prevent disease than to treat it.  From hand washing and sanitation, medical science finds ways to prevent diseases.  Vaccinations have been a successful part of that history.  More vaccines are introduced each year to prevent new diseases, to improve old vaccines, and to make administration easier without needles.  I know the anti-vaxers mean well, but they have been fed false information.  Which is the hardest kind to refute.