To halt measles’ resurgence we must fight the plague of misinformation

When I read the 1998 study falsely claiming there was a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, I was shocked. Shocked by the poor quality of the paper, shocked that it was published in a high profile newspaper, and shocked that journalists reported it uncritically. And at the time, I didn’t even know that this study was fraudulent.

Nearly three decades later, the consequences of these poor decisions made by doctors and journalists are still being felt around the world. Due to low vaccination rates due at least in part to the anti-vax movement, fueled by this fraudulent paper, six countries have lost their measles-free status, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), including the United Kingdom (for the second time), Spain and Austria. Meanwhile, the United States is grappling with the worst outbreak in many decades and would soon have lost its status as a measles-free state had it not withdrawn from the WHO.

Measles is one of the most contagious viruses on the planet. It causes serious complications in about 1 in 5 children, including difficulty breathing, deafness, blindness, and brain swelling that can lead to permanent brain damage. Globally, measles killed approximately 95,000 people in 2024.

It also kills some of the immune cells that protect us against other infections, reducing people’s immunity for about five years, so its true toll is even greater. Measles is absolutely not an infection you want to take chances with.

Fortunately for us, measles has a weakness: the virus first infects immune cells and spreads to the lymph nodes, before spreading more widely throughout the body. This convoluted pathway means our immune system has far more opportunity to intercept it before people become infectious than with respiratory viruses that primarily infect the cells lining our noses and throats.

This is why the measles component of the MMR vaccine is so effective. It is also clear, beyond doubt, that it is much better for children to be vaccinated than not to vaccinate them, and that there is no link to autism. Many studies show this, but the one I personally found most compelling is the fact that when the MMR vaccine was withdrawn in Japan, it made no difference in the incidence of autism.

But because the measles virus is highly contagious, at least 95% of children must be vaccinated to ensure that each infected person will infect fewer than one other person on average, meaning the virus cannot spread. In other words, if only a small proportion of parents don’t vaccinate their children, measles can make a comeback.

Overall the situation is not too bad, but it could be better. The proportion of children receiving a first dose of a measles vaccine increased from 71 percent in 2000 to 84 percent in 2010. It then stabilized and declined slightly during the covid-19 pandemic, but has since recovered. The WHO estimates that between 2000 and 2024, 60 million deaths worldwide have been prevented through measles vaccination – a huge triumph.

But in rich countries, we are regressing. After false claims were made in 1998, MMR take-up levels fell to 80 per cent in England and Wales. By 2013, the participation rate had returned above 90 percent, but since then it has been slowly declining. According to a report last year, this latest decline in the UK is partly due to the fact that it is increasingly difficult for parents to get their children vaccinated – a problem that urgently needs to be addressed.

But the resurgence of anti-vaxxers in many countries is certainly part of the problem, with the issue now closely linked to right-wing extremism and promoted on some social media platforms. I did a quick search for “mmr measles” on Bluesky and didn’t spot any anti-vax articles in the top results. When I repeated this search on X, most of the results were ridiculous anti-vax nonsense.

When the billionaires who own social media platforms are in cahoots with the habitual liar who runs the richest country in the world and who appointed an anti-vaccine health secretary, it’s hard to know how to combat all this misinformation.

What is clear is that this goes well beyond vaccines, with climate science being another crucial area where lies can crowd out the truth. Governments in Europe and elsewhere need to take control of the infosphere much more seriously and find ways to promote sound science and silence the charlatans. It is no less the future of humanity that is at stake.