How the measles vaccine went from no big deal to anti-vaxxer obsession.
Advertisement For many midcentury American families, a bout of the measles—kids home from school, feverish and rash-covered, eating Popsicles and reading comic books—was a rite of passage. To officials looking at the big picture, the public health toll of measles, a common and extremely contagious childhood disease, looked unacceptably high. Measles causes encephalitis in 1 case per 1,000, with further serious complications (deafness, intellectual disabilities) occurring in one-third of those cases. Most kids weathered the measles fine, but there were lots of cases, and thus lots of compl...