Measles is back but it didn't have to be. What is the western world thinking?

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic. EPA

When I was five years old, I had measles. What I remember most, beyond feeling terrible, was how worried my parents were. Statistically only between one and three children out of a thousand with measles will die. It’s a tiny number, until you think it might be your child that makes up the mortality statistics.

I remember lying in a darkened room for about a week, bored, sick, aching, unable to read, uninterested in television or the radio. It was sunny outside but the curtains in my bedroom were closed. Just enough light got in that my eyes still hurt and my father let me wear a pair of his sunglasses.

One of the many unpleasant symptoms of measles is sensitivity to light. The positive lesson of that outbreak for me, my family and millions of others around the world was the prospect of herd immunity if we were vaccinated against common childhood diseases like measles, mumps and rubella, polio and smallpox.

The British government view is clear. The MMR vaccine is the best way to prevent your children getting sick or even risking death

The miracle – as it must have seemed to my parents and older generations – was that vaccination meant it was as if these diseases no longer existed. Nowadays smallpox, caused by the variola virus and feared for its high mortality rate, only exists in laboratories. There have been no known smallpox cases anywhere in the world since 1977.

Vaccination programmes are a public health miracle. They are as significant as providing clean water to eliminate the threat of cholera and other water-borne diseases. What is therefore astonishing to those of us who remember and survived the childhood misery of measles is the degree of “vaccine scepticism” in developed countries.

This is contributing to measles outbreaks and the advancement of other diseases too, including in societies that felt as if these diseases were no longer a significant threat, except perhaps among the poorest and least developed countries in the world.

Measles is back. As a result of the infection spreading among unvaccinated people in Texas, the US is seeing the worst measles outbreak in 33 years. Some speak of a “post-herd immunity” problem, with immunisation rates disrupted after the coronavirus outbreak and also diminished by an increase in vaccine scepticism. This is more accurately defined as the unscientific belief – based on anecdotes and faith rather than research – that vaccines either do not work or are harmful.

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr is known as a prominent vaccine sceptic. His appointment may further reduce the inclination of some parents to get their children vaccinated. The National Library of Medicine website includes a recent report that “vaccine scepticism is an increasingly important barrier to optimal coverage in developed countries”.

The report goes on to conclude that personal or political views often undermine scientific facts.

“Just like specific political views [for example on reproductive rights, gun control] reflect a broader set of values and a commitment to a certain cultural group, vaccination scepticism typically reflects core beliefs about personal agency, and a spiritual, natural, life-affirming approach to health … [‘I feel that most knowledge comes from spiritual experiences’],” the report says.

Britain is also seeing an upswing in measles cases as a result of a downturn in vaccination rates in some areas. A child died in a hospital in Liverpool recently and parents are being urged to get their children vaccinated. A UK government report says: “In 2024 there were 2,911 laboratory confirmed measles cases in England, the highest number of cases recorded annually, since 2012. This was initially driven by an outbreak in Birmingham but was soon overtaken by a large outbreak in London, with small clusters in other regions.”

The British government view is clear. The MMR vaccine is the best way to prevent your children getting sick or even risking death. But it is worth examining the American experience in detail since it reveals what might be called the information fault-lines in modern society.

Experts providing information on measles and other diseases are distrusted by some sections of the population in modern democracies in ways that would have seemed unimaginable to my parents’ generation. When I was a child, vaccinations against disease were a blessing, not a conspiracy.

Last week, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued a joint statement condemning “unnecessary suffering and deaths” caused by the measles outbreak. The statement noted the highest level of measles outbreaks in 25 years and said it was grounds for “reasonable alarm” about “unnecessary suffering” from a disease that was once considered to have been “eliminated” by the MMR vaccine that is “extremely safe and effective”.

Unfortunately, facts and science often fail to triumph over emotions.

The question is why such emotions, fuelled by misinformation, are gaining a hold in the US right now. The World Health Organisation reported that the MMR vaccine prevented about 60 million deaths between 2000 and 2023. Even so, about 107,500 people died from measles in 2023 mostly in Asia and Africa. It is difficult to understand why some in the US act in ways likely to risk their children becoming part of that unhappy statistic.

My father gave me sunglasses. Pseudo-science offers only blinkers.