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There Is No Benefit Of "Natural Immunity" When It Comes To Infections Like Measles

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We are in the throes of yet another widespread measles epidemic, this one worse than the 2015 outbreak at Disneyland.  This time it has spread to pockets in several states, including Washington, Oregon, and New York, as well as to several countries in Europe. Despite measles being a vaccine-preventable illness, with the vaccine carrying close to 99% efficacy (meaning that the vaccine prevents the illness in just about everybody who gets it), there remains a sizable portion of the parent community who oppose vaccinating their children. Thanks to efforts of vaccine scientists and public health professionals, measles was nearly eradicated in the 1990's. But following the popularization of Andrew Wakefield's 1998 fraudulent study, linking the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine to autism in children, followed by celebrity endorsement of vaccines linked to autism, vaccination rates declined over the past decade, leading to larger and larger outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, many of which carry life-threatening and/or organ-threatening complications.

This past week, the wife of top Trump official Bill Shine went on a Twitter rant claiming that the recent outbreaks of measles throughout the country are overblown, "fake," and

"hysteria."  One of her more questionable (and concerning) quotes was "Bring back childhood diseases--they keep you healthy and fight cancer." Wait. What? It's one thing to question the safety of vaccines, even though the safety and efficacy of vaccination, on both a personal and public health level, have been repeatedly demonstrated in countless studies. But linking childhood illnesses such as measles, chicken pox, and mumps to cancer prevention has some history, albeit sketchy.

In the 1890's, New York surgeon William Coley noted that cancer patients who developed infections after surgery fared better than those who didn't.  He felt that the infection stimulated the patient's immune system to fight the cancer. He later created a concoction of bacterial toxins, known as Coley's toxins, to inject into cancer patients, which, in turn, would cause high fevers.  His therapy, which was used periodically until the 1950's, sometimes helped with cancer patients, and sometimes it did not. Sometimes it would cause complications; sometimes it didn't.  There is no data on his findings, nor is there any record of what his toxin actually was.  While the current advent of immunotherapy to treat cancer patients will potentially improve and better tailor the treatment guidelines for many cancers, Coley's toxins did not act in such a manner. The idea that natural immunity, in other words, developing a particular illness such as chicken pox or measles, is somehow better and more protective than receiving an immunization, especially in preventing cancer, is unfounded. The human papillomavirus (HPV) is a perfect example of the inaccuracy of this notion.  This virus is now known to be the cause of many cancers, including cervical cancer, throat cancers, and sinus cancers.  Having the illness (and HPV infection) will predispose you to have one of these cancers.  Receiving the HPV vaccine will help prevent these cancers from forming.

This week's anti-vaccine rant is yet another example of non-medical voices using their public platforms to politicize and popularize medical fallacy. The reality is that children are suffering significant morbidity (and mortality) from previously (and currently) preventable illnesses. And while not all vaccines are 100% protective (this year's flu vaccine is about 50% protective, representing a pretty typical year as far as flu vaccines go), the measles vaccine is one of the most fully protective of all, conferring close to 99% immunity to the illness after the second of a series of two MMR vaccines, given at age 12-15 months and again at age five years. Measles is also one of the most highly contagious vaccine-preventable illnesses, which is why we are seeing such large outbreaks in multiple pockets across the globe.

 

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