Measles vaccines

Somewhat 35 years ago, when I worked in Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, a leading Russian center for vaccines development and immunology research, a tragedy happened: our measles vaccine caused an epidemics of encephalitis among vaccinated. Our senior immunologist and virologist, prof. Svet-Moldavsky, was sent to investigate. It turned out that at producing facility they slightly modified protocol, using overgrown rats instead of very young, as was required. Live virus vaccines are made nowadays essentially as in days of Pasteur, by multiple passage on animals brains. So these vaccines can induce antibody production not only to virus antigenes, but to components of brain tissue as well. While antigene composition of human and animals tissues is different, some overlapping exists, so autoimmune response against brain tissue of vaccinated children is possible. This happened in this case. The story never leaked into press, of course, due to Soviet era secrecy, but everybody in Institute knew it.
Measles lethality drastically plummeted in last few decades, from several procents to one case in thousand infected. Most of it was due to concurrent bacterial infection pneumonia, which now effectively treated by antibiotics; these 1/1000 deaths are also caused not by virus itself, but autoimmune reaction on this virus targeting brain tissue. But there are sound reasons to fear that attenuated vaccine virus can induce analogic reactions. Many parents reported onset of autism symptoms immediately (several hours after) vaccination. Too early for viremia, but timing is exact for autoimmune reaction. The Wakefield witch-hunt--Melanie Phillips