The Outbreak Of The Measles

Autism Spectrum Disorder is defined as a neurodevelopmental condition that is classified by a triad of impairments. These impairments are in communication, socialization, and repetitive patterns of behavior (Wolf, 2004). Autism affects about 1% of the current population (Shishido, Branko, & Norio, 2013). This disorder seems like a common diagnosis in the current day in age but the disorder was only discovered around sixty years ago. The two founding researchers that discovered the disorder are Kanner and Asperger. Since then there has been a significant amount of research on the disorder and they have narrowed down the criteria associated with Autism. Since the discovery of Autism Spectrum Disorder, there has been many debates on what causes this condition. When it was, a recent discovery scientist thought it could have been caused by many factors including psychological conditions and poor parenting. Now research has shifted in another direction (Wolf, 2004). In recent years, there has been a debate if childhood vaccinations or genetic mutations cause the disorder. This debate has led many parents to stop vaccinating their children in case it does cause the disorder. In 2010 (de los Reyes) the immunization rates fell to 80%. These parents’ decisions greatly effects the nation’s public health so it has fueled even more research to find the cause. A very common vaccine that has been said to cause the disorder is the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine or the MMR vaccine. This

Autism is a very complex, neurobehavioral disorder that includes impairments in social interaction and communication and development skills. It usually occurs during the first three years of life. The disorder has a large range of symptoms and levels of impairment. It can severely change the way someone lives. People with autism show little interest in other people and lack social awareness. It is troubling for them to communicate express themselves, and understand what other people think and feel. In the United States only, more than 500,000 people have been diagnosed with autism. Autistic children may have repetitive body movements such as rocking, pacing, or flapping their hands. The disorder prevents children from forming relationships

One subject that has been very controversial for many years is the role of vaccinations causing Autism spectrum disorder in children. Since Eric Gallup was a healthy baby until he received was his first measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination in 1986. His parent noticed his behavior and ability to communicate after took the vaccinated. Eric had a serious reaction to the vaccine, according to his parent. In the year of 1989, he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Eric Gallup’s parents developed a hypothesis that childhood vaccine was responsible for Eric's autism spectrum disorder.

In December of 2014, an outbreak of measles, which started in Disneyland, resulted in nearly two hundred people being sickened across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The highly contagious respiratory disease spread for three months. Among those who contracted the illness, one developed severe pneumonia and multiple organ injury, while another suffered acute respiratory distress syndrome. So, why did an illness, which was purportedly eliminated sixteen years ago, experience a surge so dramatic that it caused more cases in 2014 than in the five preceding years combined? According to the CDC, the outbreak could be boiled down to one simple reason: “The majority of people were unvaccinated.” So while the California measles outbreak is a thing of the past, the fight to increase compliance with vaccinations continues. Although the benefits and safety of vaccinations are undisputed by the medical and scientific community, there are still sizeable groups of “anti-vaxxers” who refuse to vaccinate their children. These groups spread misconceptions, sometimes unknowingly, and become even more influential when coupled with the power of the internet and social media. Therefore, in order to increase compliance with routine vaccinations, the misconceptions of parents should be targeted, and legislation should be changed in order to prevent leniency and loopholes regarding vaccine exemptions.

In Michelle Fox’s article, Expect measles outbreak to continue, says doctor, Dr. William Schaffner, Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, says that the outbreak will continue for some time because there is a sufficient number of unvaccinated children to continue the spread of measles. According to the CDC, there have been 84 cases of measles and 67 of those have been linked to the outbreak at Disney. Dr. Schaffner also reiterates that measles can be brought to the United States from overseas. If someone from another country comes here with measles and is around unvaccinated children, there is potential to spread the disease.

Autism has undergone significant definition changes in the past. The term was first used in 1912 by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler from the Greek word for self—autos—in his description of patients with “schizophrenic thinking divorced from both logic and reality” (Rorvik 249). However, an established set of guidelines for diagnosis would not be established until 1943, when Leo Kanner, a German émigré to the United States, wrote “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Content”, a landmark essay in which he “described eleven children who, from infancy, had seemed to cut off from their parents…[and] existed in their own, often impenetrable world” (Pollak 250). The common features that he noticed in those eleven children were

Let 's say your child is sick and you do not understand why. The symptoms your child is showing are similar to that of the flu. You took your child to the hospital to find out that your child has the measles, a disease that is usually avoided with a vaccination. At the time you did not believe that your child needed to be vaccinated, but now that your child has contracted something that was preventable you regret your decision. The Measles vaccination has been in America since 1965 stated by the American Journal of Public Health. (Hendriks, Blume, 2013) Measles start off with flu like symptoms and it usually takes a few days for the physical part of the measles to appear. It does however disappear within two or three weeks after all the symptoms appear, but the possibility of having pneumonia or brain inflammation is high.

Measles, is a highly contagious viral illness that is characterized by a prodrome of fever, malaise, cough, coryza, and conjunctivitis and then is followed by a maculopapular rash (Kutty et al., 2014). Most persons contracting the virus recover completely, but there are some possible severe complications and these include pneumonia, encephalitis and death (Kutty et al., 2014). Kutty et al. (2014) reported deaths from the measles as approximately two to three deaths for every 1,000 reported cases.

For many years humanity has pondered the origin of autism. Autism originated from the greek word autos, meaning “self”. Many say that individuals with autism think to themselves, or is in their “own world”. This describes an autistic person 's actions, implicating that the individual is detached from civil communication. Autism was not given its label until the early 1900’s. Around 11 years later, a swiss psychiatrist named Eugen Bleuler, diagnosed a body using this

Autism spectrum disorder hinders a child’s capability to interact and communicate with others; “ASD is now defined by the American Psychiatric Association 's Diagnosis

In 1998, British medical journal The Lancet, published a research paper written by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his research partners. This particular paper stated that there was a direct link between autism, Gastrointestinal Decease and the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine. It concluded that a specific mercury based preservative found in the vaccine caused neurological damage to some children (Wakefield).

The majority of people in America are affected by autism in some way. A study done by Dr. Russell L. Blaylock in 2008 says, “In the early 1980s, the incidence of children diagnosed with an ASD was about 1 in 10,000 children. By 2005, the incidence had leaped to about 1 in 250 and today it is more than 1 in 150 and appears to be still climbing…” even in the past ten years, the number of autistic children has grown. There is no ignoring this fact. This significant rise in autism can be attributed to an increase in vaccinations, diagnostic substitution, and wireless phones.

There are those who continue to believe that the medical reason their child was diagnosed with autism is because of the vaccines they received. Even though the doctor’s study was proven to be misleading, many people still refused to get their children vaccinated. There was an increase in measles diagnosis in 2008. There was a high percentage of the reported measles cases that had either not received their vaccinations or there was no way to know if they had received them or not.

This article is based on the retrospective analysis between the timeframe of 1980 to 1994 with the data of the children in kindergarten who received MMR immunization and the children born and diagnosed with autism during these years from California Department of Developmental Services regional service center system. There is awareness raised a possible association between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The MMR vaccine and autism onset can occur by chance alone, since MMR vaccine is typically given at age of 12 to 15 months of age and parents with autistic children first start to notice the signs at the age of 18 to 19 months. However, this does not necessarily proves that vaccinations may cause autism. Due to lack

In the early 10th century AD, the measles virus was first discovered by a Persian philosopher and physician named Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi. Although he was not sure how it caused infection and how to prevent it, he published the first book that described measles. In 1757, a Scottish physician named Francis Home was the first person to successfully demonstrate that measles was caused by the spreading of an infectious agent in the blood of those affected. A man named Maurice Hilleman would later go on to invent the measles vaccine in 1963, which was eventually made perfect by physicians in the 1980s.