The anti-vaccination movement is deadly. According to the charity Unicef, more than half a million UK children were not vaccinated against measles, a highly dangerous but preventable disease, between 2010 and 2017 – which is part of a terrifying global trend. When less than 95 per cent of a population are vaccinated, herd immunity is weakened, putting people who can’t have the vaccine – babies, the elderly, those with health conditions – at risk. Parents who choose not to vaccinate are not only potentially harming their own children, but the rest of society. In the first three months of 2019, worldwide cases of measles were up 300 per cent on the year before. Once considered virtually wiped out, measles can not only cause brain damage, but is sometimes fatal. Anxiety about vaccinations is as old as this medical miracle itself. But the measles hysteria is primarily the tragic consequence of Andrew Wakefield’s debunked 1998 claim that there was a link … [Read more...] about The anti-vax movement is a symptom of our expert malaise