Expert calls measles vaccine ‘very, very, very safe’

Should parents vaccinate their child for measles? This expert says there is only one answer.

Measles can pack a serious punch, landing as many as one in four infected people in the hospital and killing one in 1,000. The peak season in temperate climates starts about now, in late winter and early spring.

Widespread immunization all but eliminated measles from the United States by the year 2000. But the disease has seen a resurgence in recent years, thanks in part to lower immunization rates driven by parents who claim religious or philosophical exemptions to mandatory childhood vaccinations.

One child with measles walking through a school will pretty much infect every other susceptible person in that school.

These requests for exemptions are often based on unfounded safety concerns, including the fear that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism—a link made in a 1998 article in the scientific journal The Lancet. The journal retracted the article and numerous studies have debunked the findings.

Measles outbreaks in the United States, triggered when unvaccinated people travel here from other countries, are ongoing in New York, Washington, and Texas. California has reported at least one case since the beginning of the year.

Here, Art Reingold, professor and division head of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, talks about measles, vaccine safety, and the importance of immunizing kids.

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