Herald Column: On Measles & Anti-Vaxxers

This week's Calgary Herald column from yours truly looks at how news from Britain relates to recent measles outbreaks closer to home: 

It may seem entirely inconsequential to people here that the UK’s General Medical Council has struck one Andrew Wakefield from that country’s medical register.

Unfortunately, however, Wakefield’s foul legacy is very much consequential. His latest comeuppance is hopefully a small step in undoing the damage of that legacy, but either way, so much damage has already been done.

Wakefield is the author of a now completely discredited paper published in 1998 in The Lancet, which implied that the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine was linked to autism.

Numerous studies have shown conclusively that no such link exists (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), but the sensationalism surrounding Wakefield’s paper was a like a lit match tossed into a flammable mix of anti-vaccine hysteria and the fear arising from the mystery of autism’s causes.

Wakefield’s research had the predictable effect of scaring people away from the MMR vaccine. Vaccination rates plummeted in the UK, and not surprisingly the number of measles cases soared.

In 2008 in the UK there were almost 1400 cases of measles compared with 56 the year Wakefield’s paper was published. In 2006, a 13-year-old boy died from measles – the first time in 14 years such a death had been recorded.

On top of the multiple studies rejecting the MMR-autism link, The Lancet itself issued a complete and formal retraction of Wakefield’s paper this past February, citing his unethical and irresponsible conduct. At times, it seems, vaccines are a victim of their own success.

Once a disease like measles becomes rare, we tend to drop our guard – either forgetting how serious it is or assuming that it can never come back. Well, as we’ve seen in the UK, it can come back with a vengeance.

Unfortunately, it’s not only the UK where we’re learning that lesson.

This month, Alberta Health Services has confirmed five cases of measles in the Calgary-area.

 

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There are still pockets of the province where vaccination rates are low and, as expected, measles cases there have been higher. Southwestern Alberta, for example is one of those regions. Not only has measles made a comeback in that region – a 2000 outbreak forced the closure of a Lethbridge-area private school – but cases of mumps and whooping-cough have been documented over the past two years.

 

In B.C., meanwhile, 87 measles cases have been confirmed so far this year. It’s believed many of those cases stem from infected out-of-country visitors who attended the Vancouver Olympics. All cases involve people who were either not vaccinated at all, or only partially vaccinated.

 

Eight cases were associated with a single household, where no one had been vaccinated. The reason, according to one official, was that a friend of the family was influential in convincing them not to get vaccinated. They’re now paying the price for these ignorant conspiracy theories.

 

Unfortunately, there are also those who try and capitalize on these fears, and shamelessly peddle these unfounded anti-vaccine claims while selling their own “natural” or “alternative” (i.e. useless) treatments.

 

Understandably, no parent wants to put his or her child at risk. We are all much more aware now of the challenges faced by autistic children, and the mere suggestion that the condition stems from a conscious decision made by the parent is a source of enormous guilt and worry.

 

The blame lies not only with those who have spread unjustified fears over the MMR vaccine, but also to those in the media who devoted far more coverage to Wakefield’s shoddy paper than to the numerous other peer-reviewed studies which found no link.

 

In light of what the science tells us, the real question is why anyone would put their children at risk by not getting the vaccine. We shouldn’t have to learn the hard way that measles is not something we want coming back.