Jenny McCarthy, Megyn Kelly, Dana Loesch and the Measles Vaccine

The other night I was watching The Kelly File, my favorite source for television news. During one segment, Megyn had guest Dana Loesch on to discuss the recent back-pedal of Jenny McCarthy regarding McCarthy’s former general opposition to vaccines. During their conversation, Megyn and Dana expressed concern that it is somewhat irresponsible for someone of McCarthy’s influence to espouse this sort of “junk science”, and that it imperils children of parents who might act on McCarthy’s “unscientific” suggestions, and thereby subject those children unnecessarily to childhood diseases that were long ago eliminated by the use of vaccines. Megyn and Dana referred specifically to measles, the measles vaccine, and to the recent rise in measles cases.

Everyone knows that the measles vaccine immunizes against measles, and that the recent increase in measles cases is among those children whose parents are choosing not to vaccinate.

Hmmm. No, not really. If the statistics from the CDC posted below can be believed, the vaccine was surely not the reason for the declining mortality rate. The first measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. It was subsequently pulled from the market, as was its successor. Apparently, they weren’t safe.

As for the second half of what everybody knows about the measles vaccine, that the recent increase in measles cases is among those children whose parents are choosing not to vaccinate, the makers of the vaccines and the CDC acknowledge that some children who are vaccinated are susceptible to measles anyway, usually, um, coincidentally, within two weeks of receiving the vaccine. The rate of immunity to measles among vaccinated children is claimed to be 95%. Among unvaccinated children, the rate of immunity exceeds 99%. 

Another baffling assumption made by subscribers to conventional wisdom is that the symptoms are the sickness. If I have a fever, they would say, then make the fever go away and I’ll be well. Not true at all–in fact, quite the contrary–if I eat something toxic and I don’t throw it up or eliminate it in the usually unpleasant way, then there really is something wrong with me.

All of this could easily become common knowledge. I don’t expect that this will convince anyone. But I can’t help but be amazed that some of the same people who are so suspicious of government oversight of such mundane areas of commerce like, say, medical insurance, have no problem submitting to the conventional wisdom of governmental mandates for vaccines. If they’re so good for us, why do they have to be forced on us? And why are those who doubt the benefits of vaccines bullied and ridiculed by people who don’t even know the most basic facts about the vaccines?

By the way, trivia question: Who developed the first vaccine for scarlet fever?