If the vaccines are effective, then those who get vaccinated should have nothing to fear from the unvaccinated.

—BARBARA LOe FISHeR

One study, published in the March 2009 Pediatrics, suggests that children who get measles are less likely to have allergies.

Above: Barbara Loe Fisher, cofounder of the nonprofit National Vaccine Information Center and the mother of a vaccine-injured child

Unlike polio, diphtheria, tetanus, and hepatitis B, measles is a viral infection that is highly contagious and easily spread. Between 2000, when measles was declared to be eliminated from the US, and 2007, an average of 63 cases of measles were reported annually. But from January to July of 2008, 131 cases of measles were reported to the CDC, sparking widespread concern among public health officials. 29 “With the outbreaks of pertussis, measles, and now Haemophilus influenzae type b,” says Paul Offit, “we have reached a point where it’s clear that a choice not to get a vaccine can be harmful not only to your child but to the child who comes in contact with your child.”

Yet the measles vaccine is thought to have a rate of effectiveness of close to 90 to 98 percent, 30 and Offit readily admits that the very small percentage of vaccinated children who might contract measles if exposed to it would have only a mild case of the disease, assuming they had some immune response to the vaccine. A child who follows the recommended guidelines for the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and is vaccinated against measles at between 12 and 15 months of age, and again between 4 and 6 years, should have a negligible risk of contracting the disease. Although the Private Practice episode depicted measles as a disease

that causes almost instant death, before the MMR vaccine, measles was a routine, even ubiquitous, illness of childhood that rarely led to complications in otherwise healthy children.

Some health-care providers and many parents who choose not to vaccinate believe that there may be long-term benefits to getting a disease like measles, including lifelong immunity and a strengthening of the immune system overall. One study, published in the March 2009 Pediatrics, even suggests that children who get measles are less likely to have allergies. 31 But whatever your opinion about measles, we know that the vast majority of measles cases are mild, and we are told that a child vaccinated against measles will have an even milder case. There seems to be no real risk to vaccinated children from unvaccinated children of being exposed to or of having any complications from this disease.

“If the vaccines are effective, then those who get vaccinated should have nothing to fear from the unvaccinated,” points out Barbara Loe Fisher, cofounder of the nonprofit National Vaccine Information Center and the mother of a vaccine-injured child. “If the vaccines are not as effective as the companies, government, and pediatricians have told us, then what a person does when they get vaccinated is they take a high risk of having a vaccine reaction as well as a high risk of

COURteSy OF BARBARA LOe FISHeR

29. “Update: Measles—United States, January–July
2008,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 57, no.
33 ( 22 August 2008): www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/
mmwrhtml/ mm5733a1.htm.
30. W. Atkinson et al., eds., Epidemiology and
Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, 10th ed.

( Washington, DC: Public Health Foundation, 2008), 138. 31. Helen Rosenlund et al., “Allergic Disease and Atopic Sensitization in Children in Relation to Measles Vaccination and Measles Infection,” Pediatrics 123, no. 3 (March 2009): 771–778.