The measles epidemic located in the
northern part of the sate has been called “serious” by Richard Goldstein, director of the New Jersey Department
of Health Teams of technicians have been sent to the area to inoculate any and
all who can’t prove measles immunization. Television news is even more
dramatic, stating “
Of course the problem is that we declared
war on measles years ago, long after most of the adolescent and adult
population had become immune to the
disease. This column predicted at the time, that we might be much better off
letting measles spread throughout the community than trying to curb it, since
we could not be assured that immunization could be universally carried out. As
a matter of fact, man made immunization couldn’t b spread as efficiently as the
disease itself was able to spread it.
In this country measles was relatively
mild. Sure it could cause pneumonia, encephalitis, blindness and the like, but
most of those who caught it recovered and no one ever caught it twice.
Furthermore people who had sub-clinical measles, a mild affliction they might
not even have known about,, became immune. Those at risk to measles were
youngsters who were youngsters who had yet to catch the virus. Usually by the
age of 8 to 10 most of us were immune.
Measles in the very young were prone to
be mild cases. But the older the patient the more serious the disease. It were
almost as if the measles virus were saying “Get out of my way you are too old
for me. I want to play with the kids.”
And that of course was the risk of the
measles program. If everyone were not immunized the virus would still be
around, and when it struck it would hit people never before exposed, often an
older population who had never had a chance at natural immunization. And these
people are at much greater risk than youngsters.
Measles is lethal to Eskimos who never
encountered it before. What we did with
our immunization program was to create pockets of “Eskimos” – those who have
never been in contact with the virus. They will have little or no resistance to
the disease.
It would seem wise when dealing with
relatively mild diseases that confer immunity, to let them run through the
community and immunize it.
The last line of