Amid Measles Outbreak, Anti-vaccine Doctor Revels in his Notoriety Terrence McCoy is a foreign affairs reporter for the Washington Post. On January 30th, McCoy published a telephone interview with Dr. Jack Wolfson about the anti-immunization controversy. Dr. Wolfson is a cardiologist who now does holistic medicine and supports the anti-immunization movement. According to WebMd.com, “holistic medicine is a form of healing that considers the whole person: body, mind, spirit, and emotions, in the quest for optimal health and wellness”. In his interview Dr. Wolfson called “bad mothers” who vaccinate their children without knowing or caring about what chemicals are in them. According to Dr. Wolfson, we should let children have measles, chicken pox, rubella, mumps because “these are the rights of our children to get it.” When I read this phrase, I asked myself, should we let our kids be in pain and suffer for something that we can prevent? …show more content…
Wolfson stated in his interview “Measles is not a big deal.” Measles outbreak in the United States has increased tremendously since parents refuse to have their children vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published a report, “Measles Cases and Outbreaks,” that shows how the measles cases have been increase nationwide. This controversy started when “The Lancet” published a research made by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who suggested the vaccine can cause autism. After investigation the British medical journal published an article criticizing Dr.Wakefield and accusing him of fraud. As a result “The Lancet” retracted the research. The dishonest research and violation of ethic caused Dr. Wakefield to lose his medical license. However, Dr. Wakefield’s research made a big impact in the way some American parents view vaccines. These parents now refuse to have their children vaccinate and blame the vaccine for their developmental
An outbreak of Measles would have a huge impact on a community as a whole. Educating students would come to a temporary halt as students would need to be assessed by healthcare workers for any physical ailments and for anyone that has never been vaccinated. Any students discovered to be symptomatic and possibly infected would need to be isolated and treated, and any students without immunity would need to be vaccinated. This would also be the case with businesses in that employees would need to be assessed as well, which would slow down productivity for the businesses. Hospitals would have to invest time into making sure all healthcare workers were immunized and getting immunizations to the ones that were not or send them home after making sure they were not infected. Special
This led to the support of various unproven vaccine-autism theories by parents in both the UK and America. After findings of intestinal disease in children with autism, Wakefield claimed that separating the MMR into three different vaccinations would be safer. Since then, Wakefield’s research has been discredited, he was charged with serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council for violating several ethical practices, and he was investigated for failing to disclose conflict of interest – a pending patent on a rival measles vaccine (Gross, 2009). Although false, many still believe wholeheartedly that vaccines are harmful.
In December of 2014, an outbreak of measles, which started in Disneyland, resulted in nearly two hundred people being sickened across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The highly contagious respiratory disease spread for three months. Among those who contracted the illness, one developed severe pneumonia and multiple organ injury, while another suffered acute respiratory distress syndrome. So, why did an illness, which was purportedly eliminated sixteen years ago, experience a surge so dramatic that it caused more cases in 2014 than in the five preceding years combined? According to the CDC, the outbreak could be boiled down to one simple reason: “The majority of people were unvaccinated.” So while the California measles outbreak is a thing of the past, the fight to increase compliance with vaccinations continues. Although the benefits and safety of vaccinations are undisputed by the medical and scientific community, there are still sizeable groups of “anti-vaxxers” who refuse to vaccinate their children. These groups spread misconceptions, sometimes unknowingly, and become even more influential when coupled with the power of the internet and social media. Therefore, in order to increase compliance with routine vaccinations, the misconceptions of parents should be targeted, and legislation should be changed in order to prevent leniency and loopholes regarding vaccine exemptions.
MILLERSBURG — More than two years after a measles outbreak swept through unvaccinated populations in Holmes, Wayne and surrounding counties, details of the outbreak and the subsequent public health response recently were detailed in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Vaccinations have been around for many years, preventing many generations from encountering harmful diseases that at one time lead to death. Recently, there has been an anti-vaccine movement composed of parents debating over whether or not their child’s safety is in the best interest due to harmful side effects that have been identified when it comes to specific vaccines. The CDC recommends each child have a set of sixteen different vaccinations by the age of 6 years old, of those being the MMR which comes in 2 separate doses. By giving children vaccines there is an opportunity to minimize the risk of spreading the virus to other children and gives the whole society the chance to build immunity against an outbreak. Even though the incidence of many diseases has fallen drastically due to the result of these vaccination programs, individuals who are apart of the anti-vaccine movement continue to forgo their children from receiving the vaccinations, like the MMR vaccine because of the fear of possible side effects, including autism. Scientists and doctors are using their voices to show that science has found no link that the MMR vaccine causes autism, while most anti-vaccine movement members have chosen to use the false information as their explanation for not vaccinating their children. Parents should always be given the right to choose what they think is best for the children, but given the health benefits, safety precautions and scientific evidence of low incidence rates
There are many viruses today that at one time were a deadly disease, however because of advances in technology and vaccinations, we no longer give them a second thought. Prior to the discovery of a vaccination, the United States reported a total of over 50,000 cases of measles outbreaks each year with 450-500 cases resulting in death. (NCIRD) Since the disbursement of an effective vaccination, the measles has been almost eradicated in the United States; however it is still abundant in other countries around the world. (The college of physicians of Philadelphia) Is this something we think of when we are traveling? Is it possible for people to visit or immigrate to the United States carrying the disease with
With the effective work carried out by all agencies involved in the measles epidemic, the outbreak was declared over on July 2rd 2013 this is thought to have been a short time frame and could of lasted a lot longer if it wasn’t for the commitment and combined efforts provided by all agencies including primary care, local authorities, health boards and public health wales (BBC, 2013).
A few months ago thousands of people went on vacation to Disneyland to enjoy time with their families, but also unexpectedly faced potential exposure to measles. A disease that due to an effective vaccination program launched in the US in the early 1960’s was thought to be eradicated (Orenstein, 2004). This amusement park was a perfect medium for the airborne virus to find new hosts and with the increased number of unvaccinated children this provided the perfect circumstances for an outbreak to take occur. “Measles is a highly contagious, serious disease caused by a virus,” (Measles, n.d). The United States had 668 record cases of measles in 27 states, in 2014. This is the highest number of cases documented since 2000 (Measles Cases and Outbreaks, 2015). Among the 110 individuals infected during the Disneyland outbreak, 45% were unvaccinated, 43% were unknown/undocumented, 6% has two doses of the vaccine, 5% only had one dose of the vaccine, and 1% had three doses (Zipprich, 2015).
Measles (also known as rubeola or “red measles”) is an acute, febrile viral infection that was a very familiar childhood infection world-wide until the introduction of an attenuated live-virus vaccine in the 1960’s. Now it is rarely seen in the United States and the rest of the medically developed world, re-emerging usually only when and where there has been a lapse in routine immunization practices and the necessary high levels of vaccine coverage have dropped. On a global scale, prior to the measles vaccine, the effects of measles were devastating — millions died from measles each year in all parts of the world. However, global measles deaths are diminishing, decreased by 75% from an estimated 544,200 in 2000 to 145,700 in 2013 (Moss and Griffin, 2012; WHO, 2015 Feb).
Even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available, measles is one of the leading cause of death among young children.
After proving that the vaccine was both safe and efficient, first by experimenting on monkeys and then humans, John Enders and his colleagues announced their measles vaccine that was capable of preventing the virus (The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 2015). The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine contains small traces of each virus. The vaccine is such as a success as it triggers the immune system to produce antibodies against all three viruses. Thus, when one comes into contact with one of these highly contagious viruses, the immune system will recognise it and immediately produce the antibodies needed to fight it (Better Health, 2015). Regular routine MMR vaccination for children, with additional mass immunization campaigns in countries with high numbers of outbreaks and deaths, are key public health strategies to reduce global measles deaths (World Health organization, 2015). In 2013, about 84% of the world's children received 1 dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 73% in 2000. Two doses of the vaccine are recommended to ensure immunity and prevent outbreaks, as about 15% of vaccinated children fail to develop immunity from the first dose (World Health Organization, 2015). The technology and understanding of the measles virus
There is persistent problem of measles outbreaks occurring in the U.S. Although some numbers of outbreaks may seam low, each outbreak of measles can infect several people because it is such an infectious disease. Some symptoms are visible approximately 10-12 days after infection (WHO, 2015). The symptoms range from fevers, dehydration, diarrhea, and rashes or even on rare occasions in the U.S., death (Watkins, 2014). Measles rarely kills in the U.S., but it has done so in 2003 and in one case in 2015 (CDC, 2015). In 2011, 17 measles breakouts and 222 measles cases occurred across 31 U.S. states and the main problem that stemmed from all of these is from either unvaccinated people got infected or from people who did
Conclusion: in conclusion my research I found that since the introduction of the MMR vaccine programs in Britain that it had a very effective effect on the measles epidemiology. In my data you will see since the introduction of the vaccine program in 1988 the number of notifications (cases) and deaths has dropped drastically and also can be seen in a wide perspective when comparing the readings to the 1940's readings.
Though many diseases no longer affect people in the United States, thanks to immunization, these diseases are still active in other parts of the world. Therefore, when people go to other countries, they can bring back these diseases if they are unvaccinated. According to CNN in the year of 2014, “The measles outbreak that began when unvaccinated Amish missionaries traveled to the Philippines has more than doubled in size in ten days… At least 155 people have caught this highly contagious respiratory disease.” Measles is a respiratory disease that can be easily prevented by vaccinations. It can go unnoticed for up to 21 days before symptoms start showing, which gives this disease a lot of time to spread to other people. Luckily, vaccines are
The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2016 reported that measles is one of the leading causes of mortality among young children, furthermore statistics have shown that measles claims approximately 134200 lives annually. Measles is an acute, contagious virus and it is an illness that is preventable by using vaccinations (Wolkoff, Grim, Marx, 2011). The measles disease is caused by an infectious agent called the genus Morbillivirus that originates from the paramyxovirus family and the symptoms that prove one has measles include (WHO, 2016):