Does a new study show that wild measles leads to temporary immune-memory loss? Would that be good or bad? Or complex?
In a carefully orchestrated marketing blitz designed to squelch the growing awareness of the flaws of the MMR vaccine, a new study has hit every media outlet on the planet. Not a person within reach of a radio, television, the Internet, newspaper, or magazine was spared being told in no uncertain terms that the wild measles virus causes “immunity amnesia.” Do the headlines match the data? Or is there more to the story . . .
Here is the full study at SCIENCE MAGAZINE. Read critically, with common sense, and an open mind. Follow the citations. Go down the rabbit hole, from one study to another. Vaccines were introduced before much at all was known about the immune system. It’s startling how little is actually understood even now about natural infections and their short term and long-term impact on the immune system. Even less is known about the consequences of artificial exposure to lab-altered pathogens through vaccination, yet the authors are quick to promote vaccination with the measles vaccine. But of course, there is no “measles vaccine”, and certainly no safe measles vaccine that has been through a gold-standard double-blind saline placebo study. In the U.S. there is only the controversial trivalent MMR measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, which presents complex risks and many unstudied unknowns of its own, including leaving many fully-vaccinated adults susceptible to measles.
A few passages from the study that raise questions:
“Loss of antibodies after MV infection varied widely for specific pathogens and between children.”
A subheading boldly states: “The MMR vaccine does not impair the immune repertoire” but the paragraph that follows is not so definitive. “. . .in infants and young children, such as the MMR-vaccinated cohort in this study, the antibody repertoire continues to add antibody diversity over time . This is particularly true during the second year of life, following depletion of maternal antibodies, when measles vaccines are first given. These overall increases in antibody diversity over time could be obscuring potential minor impairments from measles vaccine, especially given the relatively long sampling interval for the vaccinated controls . . .because of the naturally rapidly increasing antibody diversity in this young cohort at the time of MMR receipt, we cannot definitively rule out the potential for minor reductions of antibody-producing cells with measles vaccination.”
“Although antibody diversity and abundance were negatively affected for almost all pathogens, a subset of children had increased EBS and/or epitope hits for particular pathogens after measles, suggestive of potential restoration of immune memory after the initial immune depletion. . . . In these children, the probability of retaining preexisting antibodies for these pathogens was relatively high”
“Combined, these indicate local pathogen transmission and suggest that reconstruction of the antibody repertoire occurs on a per-pathogen basis and is associated with new exposures.”
