Remember when measles were pretty much gone?
With an unusually large outbreak in West Texas now and the death of a child, the first death from measles in a decade, people are asking so what’s happened, what’s changed.
It was the year 2000, as we entered the new millennium, that measles were considered eliminated in the United States.
But right around that same time, two years before in 1998 and two years after, 2002, two studies came out that claimed that the MMR vaccine for measles mumps and rubella causes autism. Highly respected medical experts said both studies are critically flawed and they were consistently debunked.
But from the discredited studies emerged a campaign by anti-vaccine advocates and an increased number of parents who began to choose not to get vaccines as much as before.
As a top health official in Texas put it. because of that, over the last 20 years we have seen measles outbreaks more frequently, but she it is related to how much we’re vaccinating our population.”
She says ,“When we think about vaccine preventable illnesses, they’re only preventable if we have adequate vaccination rates.
So now there is a new push to encourage all parents to make sure their kids are vaccinated, so measles can’t take any more lives.
(Photo Getty Images)