In a recent, in-depth interview with KCBS Radio, now available online, Stanford immunologist Mark Davis, PhD, called vaccines “the single most life-saving medical innovation ever in the history of medicine” and called not vaccinating children a real danger.
Davis was interviewed on air for 30 minutes following the announcement that he'll direct a new, $50-million initiative at Stanford, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims to speed discovery of vaccines for some of the world's deadliest infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV.
Davis, who directs the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, harked back to the time when cemeteries were filled with the graves of young children who fell victim to diseases such as measles and mumps that were virtually wiped out with the advent of vaccines. In the pre-vaccine era, about half of all children died of infectious diseases that are readily preventable today, he noted.
“One day I wandered through Union Cemetery in Redwood City, which started around 1850," he said. "What was telling about the earlier graves is how many graves you have where they are two large headstones for the mother and father and a lot of little headstones for the children who died in infancy from measles and mumps and all these diseases that had also vanished with childhood vaccination but that are now coming back because people say, ‘I’ve heard something bad about these vaccines. So we are not going to give them to our kid.’”
Parents who chose not to vaccinate their children “are putting your kid at risk and also putting other young children at risk, as children don’t get vaccinated for measles until they are one year old. So kids die. Older people – a population we study here at Stanford - don’t respond very well. Their immune system often deteriorates with age… So even if they had a measles shot in their youth, they might still be vulnerable. So if you don’t vaccinate your child, you are putting your kid at risk, anyone with an immune deficiency at risk, little babies at risk, old people at risk. It just shouldn’t be permitted.”
Measles, he noted, is a “very ambitious” virus that spreads through the air, surviving on droplets of water vapor, so coughing can readily spread the disease. As a matter of public health, the disease can be controlled through the principle of “herd immunity” – the idea that if most people are vaccinated, a disease will be less likely to move through the population, he said.
“So it’s not just about you and your child. It’s about society... If more and more people are not vaccinated, it gives a virus, like the measles virus, an opportunity to run through the population very quickly, which it does, and endanger many more people,” he told listeners.
As to whether California should require parents to vaccinate their children, Davis was adamant on the subject:
I wouldn’t want unvaccinated kids in a classroom with my kids. I think it’s a danger. These are decisions made by parents that could affect the health of their children for the rest of their lives... The government is totally correct to say you should not kill your child, you should not starve your child, you should not beat your child, and you should not deprive your child of vaccines.
Previously: With a Gates Foundation grant, Stanford launches major effort to expedite vaccine discovery, Infectious disease expert discusses concerns about undervaccination and California’s measles outbreak and Side effects of childhood vaccines are extremely rare, new study finds
Photo by NIH
