Let’s Talk Measles…Especially Rubella
In my early forties, when I started nursing school, I was required to provide my program director with the results of an antibody titer. This is a blood test that detects the presence and measures the amount of antibodies within a person’s blood and thus my ability to not infect a patient or have a patient infect me.
Now with measles in the news, and wanting to write about it, I got out my Baby Book. Yes, I still have it–and wanted to know details concerning measles, three-day measles (rubella) and mumps.
Put all three together and they are the MMR—an immunization that for the first time in modern history is being scorned and avoided.
Mom did not disappoint. A page in my Baby Book is labeled:
PREVENTIVE MEASURES AGAINST COMMUNICABLE DISEASES.
There, Mom listed injections for Diphtheria and Whooping cough (Pertussis)—both serious illnesses. Because an inoculation for Tetanus was unavailable then, I probably got that inoculation later, but Mom didn’t make a note of it. (Now all three are contained in the DTP vaccine.)
But what I was looking for was the page labeled ILLNESSES.
Mom listed three.
Measles
three-day measles (which is also called German measles or Rubella)
Chicken pox. (Varicella Virus)
Next to the name of each, Mom wrote a word that would recall how sick I was. She wrote:
Measles—Very severe.
Chicken pox—severe
Three-day measles—she simply wrote German
WHAT I EXPERIENCED
Mom was right about measles! I remember I had such a high fever that I was delirious, saying weird things, not knowing where I was. Mom told me later that she spent every moment watching over me, praying she wouldn’t lose me.
When my brothers and I all got the chickenpox, Mom went from room to room bathing us, applying lotions to deaden the itching, or putting bandages or a soft cloth on the skin where we had scratched so much we were bleeding.
Mumps isn’t recorded in my baby book, but we all got that too. There has always been a concern that mumps in male children can lead to infertility. Mom was aware of that. You can read more about that complication with mumps here.
Then finally, all three of us got the German measles, which was basically a breeze. But this measles, called Rubella (now part of the MMR), can actually be very serious.
RUBELLA: Sensory Deficits in Children
Growing up, we knew the reality of this. A friend of Mom’s, who had not had rubella as a child, was exposed to the virus, and became ill with it while pregnant with her daughter Catherine. Because of her exposure in utero to rubella, Catherine was deaf and afflicted with poor eyesight. Her parents helped her become a strong person, but she struggled with these deficits and died early in her life. Today, there is no reason a woman should bear a child who has been harmed by the rubella virus, no reason that child should suffer. There is a vaccine to prevent this.
A PROBLEM THAT IS ON THE RISE AGAIN
Mark Dorsey is deaf. In 1966 when his mother was in her third trimester, she contracted rubella. Mark Dorsey’s mother felt no ill effects, but her doctor warned about what could happen to her fetus. Babies exposed to rubella in the first trimester face dire results: miscarriage, stillbirth, and if they survive, lifelong disabilities: deafness, blindness, heart problems, liver and spleen damage, cognitive impairment.
Mark Dorsey considers himself fortunate and has spread that positive attitude while working for 23 years as a counselor at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside. But now Dorsey is concerned about future unborn children. He and Loran Rutherford, a deaf counselor and social worker who works with Mark, realize that people have forgotten how devastating rubella is. Parents who are not allowing their children to receive the MMR, who are raising children that will grow up, fall in love and have their own progeny are part of what Dorsey and Rutherford call the Wakefield generation, the sons and daughters of parents who still believe Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s disproved research that the MMR causes autism.
Thus, so far in 2019, 625 measles cases have been diagnosed in more than two decades. And measles is extremely contagious, having a respiratory component where droplets fill the air. The infected person gets the rash, high fever, flu-like symptoms that can lead to pneumonia, a brain infection and even death.
Mark Dorsey and Loran Rutherford state they have have not seen increased numbers of deaf children since the arrival of the MMR. But with the Wakefield generation getting older and having babies, that could change. Imagine a scenario where a girl whose parents refused to vaccinate her with the MMR that protects her from rubella. Later she gets pregnant and then contacts rubella from others who are unvaccinated.
“It’s the grandchildren of those strong anti-vaccination activists who will be affected,” Rutherford said. “It’s job security for me and Mark—but that’s gallows humor, because we are going to get many more deaf kids coming here.”
THOUGHTS What parents have going for them now is access to vaccines that will keep their children, and also themselves, from suffering through measles, mumps, whooping cough, chickenpox, rubella, etc etc. I have also written about the scourge of polio that afflicted children in my grade school before the vaccine became available.
Eula Biss writes in her fascinating book: ON IMMUNITY: Debates over vaccination, then as now, are often cast as debates over the integrity of science, though they could just as easily be understood as conversation about power. Miore on that in a later post. Thanks for reading.
Photo credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Thanks to Robin Abcarian in the LA TIMES.
