Tuesday, October 25, 2011

An Unnecessary Measles Outbreak

From Jenny Anderson, who writes The New York Times' Motherlode blog on parenting.

In a typical year, the Centers for Disease Control sees 60 to 70 cases of measles. As of Oct. 14, it had tracked 214 cases — the worst figure in 15 years.
And here’s the part that kills me: in 86 percent of those cases, the person with the disease had not been vaccinated or the vaccination status was unknown.
Research from the late 1980s, which purported a link between the measles vaccine and autism, was found to be fraudulent. The Lancet, the journal where it was first published, retracted the article. The doctor who authored the study had his license revoked. But concern persists.

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