Measles: the comeback tour we aren't so keen on.

Apparently measles are making a big comeback this year. There have been 334 cases of measles in the UK in the first three months of 2011 (Jan-Mar). This is very bad news, which you can think of in context once you realise that there were only 374 cases in all of 2010. Of course, one case of vaccine-preventable disease is too much in what is supposed to be a developed country such as Britain- so a ridiculous amount like that is downright frightening. It has been said, unsurprisingly, that the majority of people who contracted measles had not had their MMR vaccine.

It can definitely be said that Andrew Wakefield is partly responsible for parents not wanting to vaccinate their children, after his horrible 1998 study which apparently showed that there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Although he was later shown to be a fraud - conducting the study with conflicts of interest- and his study to be inaccurate, his data had cultivated doubt about vaccines in the minds of the public.

I'm mentioning him for two reasons: one- that anybody with doubts about vaccines should know who he is, and that he's a quack, and two- that although correlation by no means equals causation, most of the cases of measles in England and Wales this year have been in kids ages 10-14. These are the children who should have been vaccinated around when Wakefield's original Lancet paper was published, but before it was shown to be bunk. Of course this is just me speculating, but it seems possible that his study could be part of the cause. Or maybe just a coincidence that makes him look even worse.

http://scepteen.blogspot.com/2011/06/measles-comeback-tour-we-arent-so-keen.html

repeat it." Measles has a notorious history.