I was so disappointed in the maturity of a particular reply and I just didn't know what else could be said afterwards, I respect those opinions while something like that might be a better fit somewhere else?
Fortunately others were actually relatively reasonable and encouraging all of us to look at this subject objectively. My own view was basically influenced by something that surprised me:
http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/04/measles-outbreak-traced-fully-vaccinated-patient-first-timeI was also taught to believe that vaccination would keep everybody safe and I trusted that as if that were some sorta medically proven fact. Things didn't quite work out that way and then I had to look things up on my own.
Then I learned quite a bit more about the history by reading this book, those 1-star "reviews" looked very strange to me since none of those "reviewers" actually purchased a copy @ Amazon.com to begin with:
http://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Suzanne-Humphries-ebook/product-reviews/B00E7FOA0U/?filterBy=addOneStarIn addition, graphs of typhoid fever and pellagra also showed pretty much the same pattern when compared to the measles counterpart:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4840a1.htmAnother quote below:
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S1.fullBy the late 1950s, even before the introduction of measles vaccine, measles-related deaths and case fatality rates in the United States had decreased markedly, presumably as a result of improvement in health care and nutrition.
More about malnutrition:
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S4.fullMalnutrition. Malnourished children have impairments in multiple aspects of the immune system, prolonged excretion of measles virus, and higher measles case-fatality rates [9, 63, 192–194]. Measles contributes to the development of malnutrition because of protein-losing enteropathy, increased metabolic demands, and decreased food intake. Children who have measles early in life have significantly lower mean weights for age than do children of the same age who do not develop measles [183, 195].
Vitamin A deficiency. Children with clinical or subclinical vitamin A deficiency in many developing countries have increased case-fatality rates [196, 197]. Measles and other illnesses are associated with reductions in serum retinol concentrations and may induce overt vitamin A deficiency [197, 198]. Hospitalized US measles patients frequently have deficiencies in vitamin A; these children are more likely to have pneumonia or diarrhea after measles [73, 199, 200]. In countries with high measles mortality, treatment with vitamin A once daily for 2 days (200,000 IU for children ⩾12 months of age or 100,000 IU for infants <12 months) is associated with an ~50% reduction in mortality [196, 201–203]. The World Health Organization recommends vitamin A therapy for all children with measles [204]. For hospitalized children <2 years old with measles in the United States, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a single dose of vitamin A (200,000 IUfor children ⩾12 months; 100,000 IU for those <12 months) [205].
I still didn't understand why the message seemed to be so "definitive" in a sense that mission was accomplished by high percentage of vaccination instead of a combination of improvements over the years. Maybe some of us would interpret that as the gold standard or silver bullet, especially the officials didn't give (enough) credits to other factors.
Eventually a message to be delivered in such context could potentially result in a false sense of security, some of us might be under the impression that protection against measles would be taken for granted. Get a shot for this and take a pill for that, as if monotherapy were actually saving the day. Is it wise to put all your eggs in one basket?
Maybe sometimes it's necessary to unlearn what we've been told about doctors and learn more about what they're doing:
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/why-prevention-is-worth-a-ton-of-cure/But can you really blame doctors for these deaths? You can when they don’t wash their hands. We’ve known since the 1840’s that the best way to prevent hospital-acquired infections is through handwashing, yet compliance rates among healthcare workers rarely exceeds 50%, and doctors are the worst. Even in a medical intensive care unit, even if you slap up a contact precautions sign, signaling particularly high risk, less than a quarter of doctors washed their hands. Many physicians greeted the horrendous mortality data due to medical error with disbelief and concern that the information would undermine public trust. But if doctors still won’t even wash their hands, how much trust do they deserve?
We've been led to believe that's reasonably safe but GSK actually got busted as a result of court's decision in Italy:
http://www.efvv.eu/index.php/24-newsflashhttp://www.studiolegalecappellaro.it/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/vaccino_sentenza-n.-2664-14.pdfA similar case and I happened to have a hard time finding any coverage by mainstream media in North America:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2160054/MMR-A-mothers-victory-The-vast-majority-doctors-say-link-triple-jab-autism-Italian-court-case-reignite-controversial-debate.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/italian-court-reignites-mmr-vaccine-debate-after-award-over-child-with-autism-7858596.html(Please, no "radical" theories required here.)
Finally, the ethics of what they did in India also seemed to be quite disturbing to me:
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-08-31/news/53413161_1_hpv-vaccine-cervarix-human-papilloma-virushttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2893485/Children-guinea-pigs-anti-cervical-cancer-drug.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2908963/Judges-demand-answers-children-die-controversial-cancer-vaccine-trial-India.htmlInstead of investing so much on inoculation, how about more on nutrition as well as the distribution of starchy staple foods?
(Again, some of us would think I'm being too biased here and that's your own choice. We're all adults and all of us should make an informed decision, especially after reading that book as mentioned above.)