A Measles Outbreak at Disneyland Is Reigniting the Debate on Vaccinations

By John Dyer
A measles outbreak in the so-called happiest place on earth Disneyland has
given rise to a vitriolic argument between doctors and those who believe vaccines
pushed by Big Pharma and government bureaucrats are harming children.

The United States eliminated measles in 2000 after a nearly 40-year-long

vaccination campaign to curb the virus. But on Wednesday, California health
officials announced they'd diagnosed 59 cases of measles in residents since
December.

Forty-two of those cases were linked to Disneyland five of which were Disney
employees. Others stemmed from visitors to the resort. An additional five cases
were found in nearby states, and in Mexico not because of a special threat from
that country, but because it shares a heavily trafficked border with Southern
California.

After someone infected with measles was on a high school campus in California's
Orange County, officials told parents that students who had not been vaccinated
would be barred from class. Two dozen students were reportedly sent home from
the school that week and told not to return until the end of the month.

Some doctors immediately blamed the outbreak on anti-vaccine activists like former
TV personality Jenny McCarthy, who has very publicly blamed vaccines for her
child's autism, and cast doubt on whether or not they really protect kids' health.
McCarthy now dubiously claims she was never so critical of vaccines.

James Cherry, a pediatrician and infectious diseases at the University of California

Los Angeles, said measles would have never spread in Disneyland if everyone made
sure their kids were vaccinated against it.

"There are some pretty dumb people out there," Cherry told The New York Times
this week. "It wouldn't have happened otherwise."

But a vocal critic of vaccinations, National Vaccine Information Center President

Barbara Loe Fisher, said she thinks Cherry was being closed-minded. Her son
developed brain swelling after a vaccination and now has learning disabilities, she

said, adding that doctors and drug makers don't want parents to know about the
dangers of vaccinations.

"People like to make this a black and white issue," Loe Fisher told VICE News. "We
either do it the way the government has outlined or there is something wrong with
you. We have a lot of people with adverse reactions to vaccinations."

She noted that the federal government has paid out more than $3 billion in
settlements to people who claim injuries from vaccines over the past 25 years.
Funded by surcharges on shots, she says that the government's settlements provide
an incentive to Big Pharma to keep manufacturing vaccines instead of worrying
about lawsuits. To Leo Fisher, the settlements prove there's collusion between the
private and public sectors to ram vaccines down the throats of American families.

A vocal critic of Loe Fisher and her supporters, however, said she was peddling
nonsense.

"They are conspiracy theorists," said Dr. Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics in the
Division of Infectious Diseases at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "They
believe there is big international conspiracy to hide the truth."

Sure, some vaccines cause adverse reactions, he said. But he stressed that those
reactions occur in a minute proportion of kids. "Vaccines stand on an enormous
mountain of evidence and stood the test of time."

The real problem with those who deny the value of vaccines, Offit said, is that they
had never seen widespread infection from preventable diseases. A century ago,
diphtheria, polio, and other deadly diseases terrified families. In the early 1960s,
shortly before measles vaccinations started en masse, around 3.5 millions kids
contracted the virus annually, and around 500 died.

"I saw friends of mine who were hospitalized with measles. You didn't have to
convince me to get vaccinated," he said.

Offit said that the blessing and the curse of the US's success in combating those
diseases with vaccinations is that too many people now take our good health for

granted at a time when many are also understandably suspicious of anything elites
in the private and public sector say is absolutely necessary for our own good.

"For them, taking these vaccines is a matter of faith faith in the pharmaceutical
industry, and faith in the federal government," he said. "There is a crisis in that
faith."