Is measles no big deal?

In a new video, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny claims that before the vaccine, measles deaths were very rare and that the vaccine isn’t needed.

Sherri Tenpenny claims that “in 1962,” a year before the vaccine came out, “the death rate from measles was two in a million.”

This is not correct. It also does not show the full picture.

Before the measles vaccine, there were about 3 to 4 million measles cases in the U.S. each year. Each year, measles caused about:

• 400 to 500 deaths
• 48,000 hospital stays
• 1,000 cases of brain swelling, called encephalitis

So even if we only looked at deaths, the vaccine helped save hundreds of children every year. But deaths are not the only thing that matters. Measles also caused millions of illnesses and many serious health problems, leading to 1 in 5 people being hospitalized.

The MMR vaccine is a live vaccine, but the virus in it is weakened. This means it does not cause measles in people who can safely get the vaccine (without contraindications).  There is also no good reason to think the measles vaccine stops working in most adults. If that were true, we would see many older adults getting measles along with unvaccinated children. That is not what we see.

Most importantly, measles does not protect people from cancer. It also does not make the immune system stronger. In fact, measles can hurt the immune system. It can cause something called immune amnesia. This means the body may “forget” how to fight infections it already learned to fight before.