Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts

Posted by samzenpus on from the paying-the-piper dept.

DavidHumus writes "Some of the longer-term effects of the anti-vaccination movement of past decades are now evident in a dramatic increase in measles. From the article: 'A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011. One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn't vaccinated her as a young child. "I was afraid of the autism," says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. "It was in all the papers and on TV."'"

3 of 668 comments (clear)

  1. Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. by MrBandersnatch · · Score: 0, Troll

    - nt -

    1. Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      Feelings don't matter; what he said is factually correct.

  2. Re:You .... by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 0, Troll

    I think I'm as amused by the reactions of the thirty-and-under-somethings here as I am by the vaccinations-cause-autism crowd. I'm not yet 60, and for my generation, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles) and chicken pox were childhood rites of passage. A tiny minority had permanent side-effects; I remember a grade-scool classmate who was deaf in one ear, supposedly as a result of measles. I *DO* recall the media hoopla from the Guillain-Barre cases after the 1976 swine-flu immunization campaign. I guess I'm saying that if YOU had a MMR shot and DON'T have a smallpox vaccination scar on your left bicep, then you're: 1) under 35, and 2) lacking historical perspective.