All quotes are from Wikipedia. First, some general background:
Complications with measles are relatively common, ranging from relatively common and less serious diarrhea, to pneumonia and encephalitis (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis). Complications are usually more severe amongst adults who catch the virus.
The fatality rate from measles for otherwise healthy people in developed countries is low: approximately 1 death per thousand cases. In underdeveloped nations with high rates of malnutrition and poor healthcare, fatality rates of 10 percent are common. In immunocompromised patients, the fatality rate is approximately 30 percent. Measles is estimated to kill 674,000 people in developing countries annually.[1]
In developed countries, most children are immunised against measles at the age of 18 months, generally as part of a three-part MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella). The vaccination is generally not given earlier than this because children younger than 18 months usually retain anti-measles immunoglobulins (antibodies) transmitted from the mother during pregnancy. A "booster" vaccine is then given between the ages of four and five. Vaccination rates have been high enough to make measles relatively uncommon. Even a single case in a college dormitory or similar setting is often met with a local vaccination program, in case any of the people exposed are not already immune. In developing countries, measles remains common.
The recent vaccine controversy in the United Kingdom regarding a potential link between the combined MMR vaccine (vaccinating children from mumps, measles and rubella) and autism has prompted a resurgence in popularity of the "measles party", where parents deliberately infect the child with measles in order to build up the child's immunity without requiring an injection. This practice poses many health risks to the child, and has been discouraged by the National Health Service.[1]
Measles is a significant infectious disease because, while the rate of complications is not high, the disease itself is so infectious that the sheer number of people who would suffer complications in an outbreak amongst non-immune people would quickly overwhelm available hospital resources. If vaccination rates fall, the number of non-immune persons in the community rises, and the risk of an outbreak of measles consequently rises.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), measles is a leading cause of vaccine preventable childhood mortality”there are 30 million cases and 875,000 deaths caused by measles every year.[2] The WHO and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reports that the global immunization drive has cut measles deaths by nearly half between 1999 and 2004 (from 871,000 in 1999 to an estimated 454,000 in 2004), "thanks to major national immunization activities and better access to routine childhood immunization".[3]
My analysis
Measles per se is not usually a fatal disease: complications are the most common cause of mortality following measles infection. No doubt improved nutrition increased the baseline health of populations in developed nations, leading to improved resistance to those complications.
But the pre-vaccine improvement in survival rates can be better ascribed to the development of antibiotics to combat the common incidence of pneumonia in measles victims, the development of IV hydration with electrolyte repletion to support those stricken by the severe diarrhea often associated with measles, and the development of therapeutic agents to combat the effects of panencephalitis: all of these were products of the "allopathic medicine" that naturopaths and homeopaths hold in such low regards. In addition, the germ theory of disease, only widely accepted in the early 20th century, led to the common practice of quarantine procedures.
The graph of measles incidence in the UK is problematic for several reasons. The large Y axis increments (2000) maximize the apparent X axis flattening of the incidence curve. It is important to note that the average number of deaths in the UK in the 1960s prior to the use of the vaccine was ~100--by 1979, the last year offered in the chart--that number was 6. Since the fatality rate for measles in developed nations is 1 in 1000 cases, we can extrapolate that the use of the vaccine led to a decline in measles incidence of from 100,000 cases in 1960 to 6,000 cases in 1979. I suspect the number now is even lower. Focusing on a single nation's historical experience is increasingly irrelevant in a global health dynamic.
We should also keep in mind that death is not the only possible deleterious effect of diseases such as measles; the 20th century surge in life expectancies in the developed world is in part ascribable to the reduced incidence of "childhood diseases." Further, the UK was already enjoying the benefit of measles vaccine use in other nations, as the introduction of the virus by international travelers had already been curtailed beginning in 1963.
I'd also point out that measles, like influenza, is a disease that commonly occurs in periodic epidemics, and this graph chooses to open with a period of epidemic heights whose recurrence vaccine use prevented.
The use of measles mortality in the UK to assert the lack of necessity for vacccines in general is also misleading because of the low mortality rate in developed nations. The picture in less developed nations, where governments already unenthusiastic about spending on national health programs use the voices of Western vaccine skeptics to justify their inaction: the same borrowing of Western pseudoscience regarding HIV has made that disease even more of a scourge in many Afrian nations.
Africa has also experienced localized surges in polio outbreaks because of religion-fanned fears that the vaccine itself is an agent of genocide. Thus, specious opposition to vaccines in developed nations creates an ever larger population of unprotected people while simultaneously maintaining a large reservoir of the virus in undeveloped nations.
Eventually, this discussion will come down to a public policy crux, a collision between parental rights and objectively demonstrated common good. If we grant that parents have an absolute right to decline vaccinations for their children, what shall we say about the right of society to be protected from these morally innocent potential disease carriers? Vaccines are not 100% effective, and the disruption of transmission by universal vaccination is an important element.
Where does the parental right to decline vaccinations end and the right not to associate with a potential carrier begin? Is a religious exception to mandatory vaccination reasonable? Should a parent have the right to impose risk upon other parents' children?
Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals.
-Pierre De Beaumarchais (1732-1799)
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