History of Vaccines: Measles
History and Vaccine
Measles is an airborne disease that can cause white spots known as Koplik's Spots to appear in the mouth and a flat red rash to spread across the body. While it has similar symptoms, Rubella also manifests a rash across the body though it is itchy and not a bright as measles. Mumps often features painful swelling of the parotid glands. The MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine helps prevent the spread of these three diseases. While this section of the guide is about the MMR vaccine, the focus will mostly be on measles.
The first known description of Measles comes from a Persian physician named Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakariya around 910 A.C.E. Since Measles is an endemic disease, it can exist in a community even after people develop resistance to the disease. This can make the spread of the disease devastating to communities that have not been previously exposed. The most infamous example of this was the spread of measles in the Americas after its introduction by European settlers. In 1529, a measles outbreak wiped out two-thirds of the indigenous people in Cuba. The disease also wiped out half of the indigenous population in Mexico, Honduras, and the Inca Empire.
An image of the impact of Measles on the indigenous population of Mexico. The graph on the left shows the population from 1519 to 1629 with the y-axis showing the population in the millions.
Source: Hoff, B., Smith, C., & Calisher, C. (2000). Mapping epidemics : a historical atlas of disease / Brent Hoff and Carter Smith III ; Charles H. Calisher, consulting editor. Franklin Watts.
Sources:
Cohen S. G. (2008). Measles and immunomodulation. The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology, 121(2), 543–544. https://doi-org.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/10.1016/j.jaci.2007.12.1152
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, May 3). Measles Cases and Outbreaks. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html.
Hendriks, J., & Blume, S. (2013, August). Measles vaccination before the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. American journal of public health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4007870/.
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. (n.d.). Measles. Timeline | History of Vaccines. https://historyofvaccines.org/history/measles/timeline
- Why It Took So Long to Eliminate MeaslesAn essay about the efforts to develop a treatment for Measles
- A History of Measles in the United StatesA short history of Measles in the United States from the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University.
Books
Vaccinating Against Brain Syndromes: the campaign against measles and rubella by In this book, the public health experts who lead the campaign against measles and rubella discuss the epidemiology of these diseases, their deleterious effect on the brain, and the development of vaccines to control their spread. After evaluating the various immunization policies, programs, and strategies developed in the United States, the book considers how global eradication of these two viruses might be approached.
Call Number: WC 580 V116 1986ISBN: 9780195036312Publication Date: 1986-01-23
Vaccinated : one man's quest to defeat the world's deadliest diseases by
Vaccines save millions of lives every year, and one man, Maurice Hilleman, was responsible for nine of the big fourteen. Paul Offit recounts his story and the story of vaccines Maurice Hilleman discovered nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly dread diseases--including often devastating ones such as mumps and rubella--practically forgotten. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine researcher himself, befriended Hilleman and, during the great man's last months, interviewed him extensively about his life and career. Offit makes an eloquent and compelling case for Hilleman's importance, arguing that, like Jonas Salk, his name should be known to everyone. But Vaccinated is also enriched and enlivened by a look at vaccines in the context of modern medical science and history, ranging across the globe and throughout time to take in a fascinating cast of hundreds, providing a vital contribution to the continuing debate over the value of vaccines.
Call Number: WZ100 H653o 2008ISBN: 9780061227967Publication Date: 2008-08-05
The Vaccine Race : science, politics, and the human costs of defeating disease by
"Riveting . . . [The Vaccine Race] invites comparison with Rebecca Skloot's 2007 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."--Nature "This is a story about the war against disease--a war without end--and the development of enormously important vaccines, but in telling that story, in showing how science works, Meredith Wadman reveals much more. I loved this book." --John M. Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Influenza The epic and controversial story of a major breakthrough in cell biology that led to the conquest of rubella and other devastating diseases. Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using tissue extracted from an aborted fetus from Sweden, produced safe, clean cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a devastating German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella. The rubella vaccine and others made with those fetal cells have protected more than 150 million people in the United States, the vast majority of them preschoolers. The new cells and the method of making them also led to vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus. Meredith Wadman's masterful account recovers not only the science of this urgent race, but also the political roadblocks that nearly stopped the scientists. She describes the terrible dilemmas of pregnant women exposed to German measles and recounts testing on infants, prisoners, orphans, and the intellectually disabled, which was common in the era. These events take place at the dawn of the battle over using human fetal tissue in research, during the arrival of big commerce in campus labs, and as huge changes take place in the laws and practices governing who "owns" research cells and the profits made from biological inventions. It is also the story of yet one more unrecognized woman whose cells have been used to save countless lives. With another frightening virus imperiling pregnant women on the rise today, no medical story could have more human drama, impact, or urgency today than The Vaccine Race.
Call Number: RA644.M5 W33 2017ISBN: 9780525427537Publication Date: 2017-02-07
Development of a Measles Vaccine
The first two Measles vaccines were approved for use in 1963. These included the Pharmaceutical company Merk's live vaccine Rubeovax and Pfizer's inactivated vaccine Pfizer-Vax Measles–K. While the live attenuated vaccine seemed to provide better long-term protection, the vaccine had unpleasant side effects. The inactivated did not have side effects, yet its long-term protection was questionable. Between 1969 and 1971, Maurice Hilleman began developing a vaccine for the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella viruses. The MMR vaccine provided 96% of vaccinated children immunity from measles, 95% to Mumps, and 94% to Rubella. A Measles Elimination Program was formed with the goal of defeating Measles in the United States by 1982. By April of 1981, it seemed that this goal might be met with an 80% drop in cases compared to the previous year. However, from 1989 to 1991 there were resurgent outbreaks of Measles in areas with low vaccination rates.
Sources:
Cohen S. G. (2008). Measles and immunomodulation. The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology, 121(2), 543–544. https://doi-org.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/10.1016/j.jaci.2007.12.1152
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, May 3). Measles Cases and Outbreaks. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
Hendriks, J., & Blume, S. (2013, August). Measles vaccination before the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. American journal of public health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4007870/
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. (n.d.). Measles. Timeline | History of Vaccines. https://historyofvaccines.org/history/measles/timeline
Ellis Island, Measles Ward
Source: Library of Congress. Permission: No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government.
Credit Line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS, HABS NY-6086-T-1
Misinformation related to the MMR Vaccine
The history of Measles and the MMR vaccine shows that these diseases can make a comeback even when the means to eradicate these diseases are at hand. In 1998, British researcher Andrew Wakefield claimed in a publication in The Lancet that the MMR vaccine was causing autism in children. Subsequent revelations however revealed that Wakefield had engaged in unethical practices in his study and stood to profit from negativity towards the MMR vaccine. For example, it was revealed in 2004 that many of the children recruited for Wakefield's study were chosen by a lawyer involved in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers. Despite these revelations and many of the co-authors retracting their names from Wakefield's paper, many people continued to believe his claims. Even though endemic measles had been eliminated from the U.S. in the year 2000, this did not prevent measles outbreaks overseas and an eventual resurgence of the virus in 2008 in the U.S. The greatest number of measles cases since 1992 was in 2019. The majority of measles cases were from unvaccinated individuals and spread quickly in communities that did not have high vaccination rates.
Sources:
Cohen S. G. (2008). Measles and immunomodulation. The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology, 121(2), 543–544. https://doi-org.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/10.1016/j.jaci.2007.12.1152
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, May 3). Measles Cases and Outbreaks. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
Hendriks, J., & Blume, S. (2013, August). Measles vaccination before the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. American journal of public health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4007870
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. (n.d.). Measles. Timeline | History of Vaccines. https://historyofvaccines.org/history/measles/timeline