subacute sclerosing panencephalitis

Measles complications – why the MMR vaccine is so important to children

Despite the claims of the anti-vaccine religion about the risks, serious measles complications should an important consideration for any parent on the fence about giving their child the MMR vaccine. This isn’t some exaggeration to compel people to get vaccines – it’s a demonstrable fact.

Unless you’ve completely ignored the news, you can’t help reading about large measles outbreaks across the world – Europe, Oregon, many areas of the USA, and elsewhere. Though the outbreaks aren’t large, thanks to a high vaccination rate in the USA against the measles by responsible and informed parents, there are a number of cities and counties in the country that have vaccination uptake that is too low for the herd effect.

Despite the anti-vaccine tropes and lies about measles complications, it’s actually a serious disease with serious deleterious effects. It shouldn’t be dismissed with a wave of the hand.Read More »Measles complications – why the MMR vaccine is so important to children

Measles can cause SSPE – child pays price for anti-vaccine misinformation

This article about how measles caused SSPE in a young child was written by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco, CA), who is a frequent contributor to this and many other blogs, providing in-depth, and intellectually stimulating, articles about vaccines, medical issues, social policy, and the law.

Professor Reiss writes extensively in law journals about the social and legal policies of vaccination. Additionally, Reiss is also a member of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines, a parent-led organization that supports and advocates for on-time vaccination and the reduction of vaccine-preventable disease. She is also a member of the Vaccines Working Group on Ethics and Policy.

On 7 March 2015, a four-year-old Italian girl dubbed “Clara” by the media died from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a complication of measles, after prolonged suffering (the girl was in the hospital in which she died for over 4 months, and has been sick at least since last October, and hospitalized elsewhere).

SSPE – a dangerous complication from not getting the measles vaccine

One of the tropes of the anti-vaccine religion is that childhood diseases, like measles or whooping cough, are not dangerous. But real science tells us that measles complications, like SSPE (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis) and death, are not innocuous. The ignorance about measles puts our children at risk.

Sadly, some of these vaccine-denying parents have set up “pox parties” to deliberately expose their children to these diseases, because they believe that natural immunity is better than vaccine-induced immunity. Not only is that an appeal to nature fallacy, but it shows ignorance on how immunity works. Read More »SSPE – a dangerous complication from not getting the measles vaccine

Measles vaccine coverage stagnant – increased measles cases in 2017

According to new research published by the CDC and World Health Organization (WHO), worldwide measles cases have spiked in 2017. Multiple countries have reported severe and protracted measles outbreaks over the past year. Because of large gaps in measles vaccine coverage across the world, there were an estimated 110,000 worldwide measles-related deaths in 2017.

Let me repeat that – 110,000 measles-related deaths in 2017. This is a disease that the anti-vaccine religion will claim over and over that it’s not a very dangerous disease. Even in the USA, where it is estimated that 1-2 children will die out of 1,000 infected by measles, it is still a dangerous disease. Of course, anti-vaxxers dismiss that risk of death as “low,” showing little empathy for children that die of measles every year.

There are other serious complications of measles:

One out of every 1,000 measles cases will develop acute encephalitis, which often results in permanent brain damage.
Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a rare, but fatal degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized by behavioral and intellectual deterioration and seizures that generally develop 7 to 10 years after the measles infection. There is no treatment for SSPE.

Measles is not trivial. And the only way to prevent the highly contagious disease is with two doses of the measles vaccine. Read More »Measles vaccine coverage stagnant – increased measles cases in 2017

Legal liability of anti-vaccine parents whose children infect others

Law & Order: SVU, an American crime drama television series set in New York City did a story about the legal liability of anti-vaccine parents. It usually bases episodes on real news stories but putting some twist on them. And for fans of the show, it is addicting.

In the spring of 2009, an episode entitled Selfish aired. The plot was about an immature, irresponsible young mother who was assumed to have killed her child. In a major plot twist (and actually one that caught me by surprise), the coroner determines that the child died from measles, in what turned out to be an outbreak of the disease in fictional New York City.

The Assistant District Attorney then decides to prosecute the mother of the child who started the measles outbreak because she had refused to immunize her child for all of the reasons popularized by the vaccine deniers. Unfortunately, the producers of the show didn’t give us the full satisfaction of having that mother spend time in prison (and if one looked at the episode with even amateur legal eyes, it probably wasn’t going to happen).

But the episode is popular with many of us on the pro-science side, and I have tweeted when the episode is on a rerun somewhere. So let’s look into the legal liability for an anti-vaccine parent whose child infects others.

by Michael Simpson
2019-10-13
Andrew Wakefield, Infectious disease, Vaccines

If you don’t follow the news out of Wales on a regular basis, then you might not know that that there is an epidemic of measles in that part of the UK. According to Public Health-Wales, there have been 886 cases of measles from 1 November 2012 through 22 April 2013. This compares to around 0-3 cases per year in the late 90’s and early 00’s. The numbers have slowly risen to peak at 159 cases in 2009. The slow increase in number of measles cases correlates with the drop in MMR vaccine uptake to around 89% by age 5, far below the 95% level that Public Health-Wales has established for MMR vaccinations.

Measles (also called rubeola, not to be confused with rubella, or German measles) is a respiratory disease caused by the measles virus. Measles virus normally grows in the cells that line the back of the throat and lungs. Measles is spread through respiration (contact with fluids from an infected person’s nose and mouth, either directly or through aerosol transmission), and is highly contagious—90% of people without immunity sharing living space with an infected person will catch it. There is no specific treatment for the disease.Read More »Consequences of not vaccinating–Report 3

Measles complications–consequences of the anti-vaccine hysteria

by Michael Simpson
2015-03-12
7 Comments
Anti-vaccines, Infectious disease, Vaccines

Angelina at five, just before onset of SSPE

This article has been substantially updated, please go there. There is also another article about a separate measles/SSPE case in Italy.

One of the memes of the vaccine denialists is that childhood diseases, like measles or whooping cough, are not dangerous. In fact, some parents have set up “pox parties” to deliberately expose their children to these diseases, because anti-vaccine lunatics believe (with all evidence against their beliefs, typical of any science denialist) that natural immunity is better than a vaccine induced immunity. Not only is that an Appeal to Nature fallacy, but it shows ignorance on how immunity occurs.

Already this year, two children have died in the United States as a result of whooping cough. And there’s probably more, because of under-reporting.