How many times do we have to say it? At least once more, apparently: The anti-vaxer movement is wrong, it’s dangerous, and it’s having major effects on public health. Like this one: More than 12,000 cases of measles, around four-fifths of which were in unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated children, surfaced in Europe in the two-year period from 2006 through 2007, with an additional 6,000 infections reported in the first three quarters of 2008.
These results come from a study published in the upcoming issue of The Lancet, and were written up by Mark Muscat of Copenhagen’s Statens Serum Institut. The study includes data from 32 countries, though 85 percent of the cases were in Romania, Germany, the U.K., Switzerland, and Italy—all of which have vaccination rates below 90 percent, well below the World Health Organization’s 95 percent recommendation.
So here it is, a highly-contagious and also highly-preventable disease making its way into children because their parents saw some study or read some pamphlet filled with inaccurate and scientifically disproved information.
To make matters worse, there’s also the class problem that anti-vaxers are causing:
People in wealthy countries (like the U.S. and U.K.) refuse to vaccinate, and then transport their diseases to poorer countries—a phenomenon noted by Jacques Kremer and Claude Muller of the WHO Regional Reference Laboratory for Measles and Rubella:
The more pressing question is how much measles does Europe export to countries with poor health systems and high fatality rates. Importations of measles virus from Europe have already triggered several outbreaks in South America… Rich countries need to be responsible for avoiding cases by implementation of high vaccination coverage, to make it the privilege of resource-poor countries not to worry about reintroductions from Europe.
Related:
RB: While the Anti-Vax Movement Strengthens, Their Arguments Only Get Weaker
RB: And So It Begins: U.S. Sees Big Measles Spike in Unvaccinated Kids
RB: Autism and Vaccinations: A Celebrity Smackdown
BadAstronomy: Countering antivaxxers
January 7th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
It is absolutely amazing how so many people can live surrounded by proof that science works and yet refuse to do the obvious things to protect themselves and others around them.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:08 am
The problem isn’t when science works, it’s professional doubt-makers who focus on when it doesn’t work. People do get sick from vaccines, but the populace don’t understand that letting contagious diseases become epidemic means even more deaths than the very few from bad vaccine reactions. And the professional doubt-makers play on that to sell hokey “natural cures” that are at best ineffective or at worst actually toxic.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:56 am
It seems like the first generation that really didn’t see widespread effects of these diseases is the first generation to start thinking about not innoculating their kids. The Boomers started getting the newly invented innoculations because their parents. Similarly for Gen X. Then the Boomers all had Gen Y innoculated, but as Gen Y grew up they didn’t see many of their friends with rashes on their bodies like the Boomers did, so Gen Y didn’t think measles and its viral friends was so bad…
So now that Gen Y is breeding, they don’t have a real concept of what these diseases are like, so they aren’t concerned with them. So they don’t innoculate their kids.
January 12th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I was born in 1952. It was normal for kids to get measles, chickenpox and whooping cough. In my small circle no kid died from them. At the time Polio vaccine was being promoted and the newsreels of children in iron lungs was an effective tool in promoting polio vaccine. Today, there are still risks with those diseases but the more knowledge we have suggests that there are also risks with the vaccines too (Even reputable pro vaccine sources ie Health Canada” admits there are small risks with vaccines but advises that there are more risks to the diseases) LIfe is risky. Children die playing sports, in swimming pools and in cars. Even with precautions. Parents who chose to vaccinate or not are making decisions based on their acceptable risk level. There is no right or wrong. Immunization may be the answer, but as we are now discovering it does not offer lifelong immunity. The hard reality is that sometimes we cannot keep people completely safe.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The style of writing is very familiar . Did you write guest posts for other bloggers?
May 10th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
[...] believe the anti-vax arguments and don’t vaccinate their children. As herd immunity falls, more kids get sick, and people are reminded why it was that we started vaccinating against diseases like measles, [...]
May 12th, 2009 at 7:35 am
There’s definitely a problem here but on what basis are you making the jump from low vaccination rates to anti-vaccination movements? If you’re going to claim you know what the cause is then please at least provide a source. I’m asking because everything I’ve read about the study made no such connection.
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