Fast Facts:
1) Before being vaccinated at around one year of age, newborns are protected from measles, mumps, and rubella during their first few months of life in part by antibodies they receive from their mothers.
2) A new Dutch study suggests that infants born to mothers who themselves received the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine in the Netherlands lose this initial immunity to measles sooner than infants born to mothers who were naturally infected with measles.
3) The duration of protection from measles was almost two months shorter in infants in the general Dutch public, where MMR vaccine is widely accepted, than in infants born in orthodox protestant communities, where the vaccine is not widely used.
4) Infants at high risk for measles, such as those in areas with ongoing endemic outbreaks or those who will be travelling to areas where measles is endemic, may need to receive their first MMR vaccination earlier, as current guidelines recommend.
Author’s conclusion: The authors conclude that infants need to receive their first MMR vaccination earlier, as current guidelines recommend. And as the number of babies born to mothers who have received the MMR vaccine will continue to increase rapidly in the developed world, the authors also urged additional study of the duration of protection in young infants over the next decade.
VLA comment: All in all we are pleased that the authors exposed another danger of depending on vaccines for immunization and urges studies on the long term effect of a synthetic approach to immunity on future generations.
However, in contrast, our conclusion would be that the population today having great technology organizing power and advanced protocols in disease management could re think ways of developing natural immunity to the measles such as by systematically contracting the disease thereby developing life long immunity with adequate protection passed to the infant. Giving the authors the benefit of the doubt, instead of recommending the cultivation of natural immunity that will serve generation after generation, the authors, as part of the establishment, are in some ways compelled to recommend earlier vaccines and more vaccines and booster to compensate for a synthetic approach to immunity. If they took VLA’s position…goodby grants! So…good job all in all!