In the first two months of 2008, San Diego suffered an outbreak of a once-common disease which has all but disappeared in this country — measles.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dates the outbreak to Jan. 13, 2008, when a 7-year-old boy returned home from a trip to Switzerland, where measles vaccination is less common.By the time he showed symptoms more than a week later, 12 children were infected. They all had one thing in common — none of them had been vaccinated.The measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR vaccine, has acquired a certain infamy among parents due to a single 1998 article in The Lancet, a British medical journal, suggesting the MMR vaccine led to higher autism rates in children who received it.The Lancet later retracted the paper, but the initial results have been used to justify the avoidance of the MMR shot and other vaccines by parents who distrust either mainstream medicine or the mainstream media.Sybil Carlson, whose son was exposed to the San Diego outbreak, told The New York Times on March 21, “I saw medical studies, not given to use [sic] by the mainstream media, connecting [vaccines] with neurological disorders, asthma and immunology.”Other parents’ unease with the shots is even less grounded in reality.In an interview on the Dec. 19 broadcast of “This American Life,” Hilary Chambers, whose infant daughter was also exposed, claimed that vaccination is like saying to a doctor, “Okay now, inject her with something I have no idea what it is, and it’s supposed to be good for them eventually and protect them, and I hope it does.””This American Life” Contributing Editor Susan Burton echoed the sentiment, describing herself as another mom who finds vaccines “scary” because “they’re not all-natural” and “you have no control over them.”This notion of control is scary enough in itself. One wonders if Chambers and Burton maintain airlocks and decontamination showers at every entrance to their houses.They must find it time consuming to sew baby clothes out of homespun thread made from hydroponically grown cotton. And when it becomes necessary to bring their children outdoors, it has to be quite difficult to find appropriately infant-sized gas masks.Chambers says she has no idea what’s in a measles vaccine, but neither does she know what’s in her produce and meat. The “organic” label only gives her the manufacturer’s promise of the item’s “goodness.” To think this translates to “control” over any product is intellectually bankrupt.Conversely, the measles virus is totally natural — it’s definitely not man-made.The many “benefits” of this completely organic item include pneumonia, increased risk of premature birth and miscarriage and encephalitis leading to mental retardation or death.Unlike many organic products, it’s easily acquired — coughing and sneezing spreads the virus, and it remains infectious for up to two hours in air, according to the CDC.It is because of the ease of transmission and severe potential complications that all states require vaccination before children enter school, and many universities — including ours — all require incoming students to demonstrate proof of immunization.In the pre-vaccine days, there was often only one public health measure effective against a viral outbreak — quarantine. Several dozen unvaccinated San Diego families had another taste of that isolation last year.But non-vaccinating parents deserve no less than total ostracism if they expose their own children and others to virulent and debilitating diseases.After all, death is also all-natural.
—-Contact Matthew Patterson at [email protected]