The recent headlines about the “measles outbreak” prompted me to examine the actual data. Notably, before the introduction of the first measles vaccine by Enders et al. in 1963, measles deaths had already declined by 97.2%, from 12,992 in 1919 to 364 in 1963—without vaccination.
After vaccination, deaths dropped to nearly zero. However, proving causality would require long-term placebo-controlled trials. Charting the pre-vaccination trend from 1949 to 1962 shows that both cases and deaths followed the expected trajectory, meaning the decline might have continued without vaccination. The sharper drop in cases may be influenced by bias, as doctors and parents—assuming vaccination prevents measles—could have attributed symptoms to other causes.
No randomized placebo-controlled trials for measles vaccination appear to exist. The renowned Cochrane Institute, while assessing measles vaccination as effective, rates the evidence as only low to moderate certainty, relying solely on observational studies rather than the gold-standard placebo-controlled trials.
Hellbound and Down 