WIDESPREAD VACCINATION OF ALL INFANTS TO PREVENT MEASLES – (08-11-04)

Why is measles still endemic in Japan? At first glance, this article would seem to support widespread vaccination of all infants. However, looking at the statistics, 88 out of 200,000 children died of the measles in Japan in 2000. That is 0.044%. Now, I am sure if we examined these 88 children that did succumb to the virus we would find that many, if not all, were immunocomprimised or otherwise did not seek proper medical attention when the disease did not resolve as expected. This is exactly what we saw this past year with the “deadly” flu epidemic. So I would suggest that this percentage could be drastically reduced lower than it already is with proper education. The point of all this? If we focused 1/10 the energy on getting patients to avoid refined carbs as we do vaccinating them, the impact on the health of our country would be staggering when compared to the measles virus.

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