The recent outbreaks of measles in Canada and the United States came as a shock to many public health experts. But not to Dr. Gregory Poland, one of the world's most admired and most advanced thinkers in the field of vaccinology.The
measles vaccine has failed, he explained two years ago in a prescient paper, "
The re-emergence of measles in developed countries." In that paper, he warned that due to factors that most haven't noticed, measles has come back to be a serious public health threat. Thankfully, in that paper and elsewhere he also spelled out in no-nonsense fashion what now needs to be done.
Dr. Poland is no vaccine denier. Not only is he among the harshest and most outspoken critics of the "irrationality of the antivaccinationists," he is also one of the strongest proponents for vaccines and the good that they can do. As Professor of Medicine and founder and leader of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, one of the world's largest vaccine research organizations; as editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed scientific journal,Vaccine; as recipient of numerous awards; as chair of vaccine data monitoring committees for pharmaceutical giant Merck; as patent holder in various vaccines processes; as someone who enjoys special employee status with the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Defense and as someone who has sat on
every federal committee that has dealt with vaccines, no one can accuse him of seeing vaccines from a narrow perspective.
And he sees the need for a major rethink, after concluding that the current measles vaccine is unlikely to ever live up to the job expected of it:
"Outbreaks are occurring even in highly developed countries where vaccine access, public health infrastructure, and health literacy are not significant issues. This is unexpected and a worrisome harbinger -- measles outbreaks are occurring where they are least expected," he wrote in his 2012 paper, listing the "surprising numbers of cases occurring in persons who previously received one or even two documented doses of measles-containing vaccine."
During the 1989-1991 U.S. outbreaks, 20 per cent to 40 per cent of those affected had received one to two doses. In a 2011 outbreak in Canada, "over 50 per cent of the 98 individuals had received two doses of measles vaccine."
Dr. Poland noted 15 U.S. outbreaks between 2005 and 2011 and 33 in Europe in 2011 alone, involving more than 30,000 known cases. Meanwhile, the "UK has declared measles once again endemic ... such outbreaks result from both failure to vaccinate, and vaccine failure."
People's failure to get vaccinated is deplorable, Dr. Poland often stresses. But the more fundamental problem stems from the vaccine being less effective in real life than predicted, with a too-high failure rate -- between 2 per cent and 10 per cent do not develop expected antibodies after receiving the recommended two shots. Because different people have different genetic makeups, the vaccine is simply a dud in many, failing to provide the protection they think they've acquired.....
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Originally Posted by Kathianne
. We went overseas when I was 2 the first time. Been a military pin cushion since. And we STILL got chickenpox and measles. There were no vaccines for them back then. 
