You can blame the reckless anti-vaccine brigade for the sad reality that measles is still killing children

MEASLES isn’t just a disease that children get. Adults get it too. Some of those adults are among those who, 20 years ago, weren’t vaccinated because of a campaign led by a charlatan who was subsequently struck off the medical register for deliberately distorting his research. Unfortunately, the fake news promoted by Dr Andrew Wakefield lives on, and a sufficient number of parents have not given their children the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to ensure herd immunity. A disease that kills, blinds and causes brain damage has not been eradicated.

Last year there were 21,315 cases of measles reported in Europe, including 35 deaths, representing a worrying increase of 400% on 2016.

France and Italy, in particular, have had major problems – with the far-right politicians of the National Front and Five Star Movement, respectively, whipping up unwarranted fears – but Ireland has not gone unaffected, particularly in the Limerick area, where there have been 27 cases. The Health Protection Surveillance Centre said it had been notified of more than 60 possible cases since the start of the year compared with one for the same period last year.

Two doses of the MMR vaccine is the best way to protect against the virus. Uptake of the vaccine in Ireland is 91%, below the 95% recommended by the World Health Organisation. In Limerick, uptake is 88%.

Children have died from measles in recent years and each death was unnecessary and preventable. It is not too late to vaccinate, even for adults.

‘Measles is a serious public health issue,’ a HSE spokesman said recently. ‘It’s so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.’

Yet we have liars who ignore or dismiss that and instead posit a bogus link between the MMR vaccine and autism. They have led a mob campaign against vaccinations which endangers the overall good. The same junk science – and illinformed mob mentality – has damaged the uptake of the cervical cancer vaccine too, and people will die unnecessarily and prematurely because of this.

Vaccines have been one of the great medical advances of the last century. Dreadful diseases such as polio have been eradicated worldwide by vaccination. When doctors say children should be vaccinated, we should believe them and act according to their recommendations, because the overwhelming evidence shows that public health during the 20th century was transformed by the availability and use of vaccines.

There is a growing realisation in political circles that something has to be done in the public interest to protect people. The European Parliament recently adopted a resolution that called on all member states to provide more information to citizens so they can make informed decisions. But appealing to reason in preference to emotion is difficult in the febrile atmosphere that pertains in the Western world at present. The French health ministry, for example, has found that every time it makes another vaccine compulsory, overall take-up goes down. Citing scientific evidence doesn’t work. Indeed, nothing – let alone cajoling, jeering, guilt-tripping – seems to work.

Radical

There is a widespread rejectionist movement that despises elites and experts and loves peddling conspiracy theories that states, for some incredible reason, want to damage our children with drugs from the hated pharma industry.

Anti-establishment populists inflamed an ‘anti-vax’ movement. It has become part of a radical political identity, one that rejects the idea of the herd and emphasises individuality, believing the only immunity people need is their own. They refuse to be told what to do, by anyone – in particular experts – especially when they can find ‘the truth’ on the internet.

Anti-vaxxers usually claim to have ‘done some research online’ and they see themselves as free thinkers and informed, not ‘sheeple’, who believe what the establishment tells them. They are aided by a culture that prizes testimony over science and feelings over reason, that posits that a mother always knows best.

Worse, if you succumb to the idea of the internet being the place to find out what the establishment does not want you to know, then you can find all sorts of incorrect nonsense about the alleged side effects and dangers of vaccines, which go unchallenged. There are no consequences for most of the people who peddle this nonsense.

It was no surprise that Wakefield, an Englishman, moved to Texas after losing his licence to practise and became a hero to conspiracy theorists. It was no surprise, either, that US president Donald Trump played to the anti-vax lobby as part of his election campaign – and brought Wakefield to the White House as a guest for the inauguration.

‘Healthy young child goes to doctor,’ he tweeted in 2014, ‘gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!’ This is nonsense, of course, but it played well in a country where most states allow exemption from compulsory vaccination on ‘religious or spiritual’ grounds. Never mind the science.

We cannot allow lies, scientific mistrust and false equivalence – the idea that equal sides of the debate should be heard – to impact on the health and lives of Irish people. That is something that I’ve tried to do on my radio show: we do not have debates on this topic as if the two sides have equal merit and evidence on their sides, to suit this misconstrued and misrepresented notion of balance. We listen only to those who have genuine and tested medical qualifications.

It makes you wonder what would have happened if social media had been around in the 20th century to allow activists a platform to lobby about perceived side effects from the vaccines that have transformed our lives.

Healthy scepticism is a good thing, of course. We shouldn’t believe everything we’re told, at least not until after we’ve tested its veracity. It’s unhealthy, however, when people insist on persisting in their scepticism, refusing to believe the medical and scientific facts that are there to reassure the public and to counter propaganda.

Yes, it is true that science and medicine have gotten some things wrong, and that they are evolving all the time, but we have to take some things on trust, particularly if they are demonstrated to us by people who have the relevant experience and knowledge and who are deemed to be acting in good faith.

We should not be arrogant enough to believe we know better than experts, especially if we have not made the effort to become informed and even if it has become fashionable to belittle people who actually do know better than us.

We are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. Not when so many lives depend on them.