This will happen again

Attention all half-educated idiot reactionary parents: you are harming your children if you do not have them immunized.

Outbreak of Measles In 2005 Shows Risk Of Refusing Vaccines

By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY, The Wall Street Journal
August 3, 2006; Page D6

A federal study tied a measles outbreak in Indiana last year to parents who didn't immunize their home-schooled children because of their concerns about vaccine safety. The study, by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, illustrated the risks associated with persistent public suspicions that vaccines have dangerous side effects, including autism. The bulk of major scientific research has found these concerns to be groundless, though studies continue.

Despite the near-elimination of measles in the U.S., 34 cases occurred in Indiana in May 2005, in the largest U.S. outbreak in nine years. In the study, published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, the authors -- who work for the CDC's National Center for Immunization -- said the outbreak originated with a 17-year-old girl who visited an orphanage in Romania on a church mission. Measles is common there. The day after she returned to the U.S., the girl attended a church gathering of 500 people, starting the outbreak.

Once a common childhood disease in the U.S, measles is characterized by an itchy rash and fever, and sometimes causes pneumonia, encephalitis and death. World-wide there are 30 million cases a year causing 454,000 deaths, the World Health Organization estimates.

According to the study, the church had no doctrinal opposition to vaccination. But the church's minister estimated that 10% of the members refused vaccination because of media reports that associated vaccines with autism. Measles vaccinations in the U.S. don't contain thimerasol, a form of mercury that has raised most of the vaccination concerns.

All but one of the patients who contracted measles were church members, and 82% were school-aged, 20 of whom were home-schooled. Most of the victims lived in four households.

Measles vaccinations cover typically 98% of schoolchildren by sixth grade. According to the government's most recent statistics, there were 27 cases among U.S. residents in 2004; 56 in 2003; 44 in 2002; 116 in 2001 and 86 cases in 2000.

In a commentary accompanying the study, Kim Mulholland, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said further outbreaks will occur in industrialized countries as long as parents "respond to spurious claims about the risks of vaccine by refusing to vaccinate their infants."

Copyright 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.