By Richard Kessin

Editor’s Note: Richard Kessin is Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Cell Biology at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. This column is adapted from one that appeared in The Lakeville Journal. 

In 1962, about 500,000 American kids got measles, with fever and spots made by the immune system reacting with the virus. Many of us remember it as relatively benign and I have heard people say, ‘I had it, and it wasn’t so bad’. But we are not all the same. Some people respond differently; immune systems are complex and vary from one person to the next. For example, about 20 percent of affected children had complications, usually encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. Or they had diarrhea and dehydration. Many were hospitalized and about 400 died. Year after year. That is hard to imagine now, because in 1963, a vaccine was produced by the legendary Dr. Sidney Hillman and his team at Merck. It was one of many vaccines made by the Merck team and saved millions of lives. 

After 1963, measles became one less thing for parents to worry about, along with polio, mumps, rubella and then chickenpox. Whooping cough, diphtheria and tetanus had been dealt with through earlier vaccines. Unlike smallpox, the measles virus was not eradicated. It still stalks unvaccinated communities.

The measles virus is very contagious, more than SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid.  Measles has another insidious property—it wrecks existing immune responses. Imagine a child in Africa, whose immune system is just managing to keep the malaria parasite at bay. A case of measles will depress the immune system, unleash the malaria parasite, and may kill the child. It continues to be one of the great killers in Africa, causing 47,000 deaths in 2022 alone. Measles is a champion of immune suppression and contagion.

The vaccine is exceptionally effective, but measles returns when vaccination stops. In an under-vaccinated community, a single tourist shedding measles virus can start an epidemic. That is what happened in American Samoa in September 2019. By January 2020, a measles epidemic was raging.

The ground had been prepared by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who had visited Samoa, met with government officials, and told them and other people that the vaccine caused autism—a debunked theory. His message had an impact. In 2017, 74 percent of babies were vaccinated (already a low rate). Three years later, as the Covid epidemic was also beginning to unfold, only 31 to 34 percent of newborns were being vaccinated. The result? By Jan. 6, 2020, 5,700 cases of measles and 83 deaths had been recorded.

American Samoa has a population is about 200,000 and about 100,000 doses of MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine were administered on an emergency basis. Schools were closed, and sports teams were idle. People stayed home and hung out a red flag to summon vaccination teams. Meanwhile, other islands in the region had vaccination rates of 99 percent with no measles or noticeable increases in autism. With help from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the public health agencies of New Zealand, Australia, Israel, French Polynesia and may other countries, health workers stamped out the measles epidemic by Jan. 22, 2020. You can find a lengthy article on the American Samoa measles outbreak, well as others in the South Pacific, on Wikipedia.

I do not know if there was an increase in diagnoses of autism among the thousands of children who were vaccinated in American Samoa, as Kennedy’s theory would predict. Did Mr. Kennedy even ask If autism had increased after thousands of kids got measles vaccine?  There should have been a wave, according to his theory, but if you don’t ask, the theory remains intact.  

Raw data say no increase in autism occurred. The American Samoa public health website does not mention autism as a problem. I called the American Samoan Health Authorities. They were very cooperative and have not noticed anything of concern, but being competent officials said that they will do a deeper investigation. Numbers count. We will let you know the results. 

The fact remains that the CDC and other organizations have debunked any connection between the MMR and other vaccines and incidences of autism. Yet vaccine skepticism continues to thrive, and cases of measles continue to rise her in the U.S. The message from events in American Samoa is simple: Be skeptical of people who never admit that they are wrong. Don’t believe people who think they know, but don’t.