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Parents concerned about their vaccinated children potentially contracting measles from unvaccinated children may want to consider the fact that the bigger health threat is technically the vaccine, not the disease itself. Comparative data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reveal that nobody has died from measles in more than 10 years, while at least 108 deaths reported in VAERS during the same time frame have been linked to measles vaccines.

Many of our older readers probably remember a time when measles wasn't viewed with the obscene level of paranoid hysterics being witnessed today. Like chickenpox, measles was a common childhood infection that, after running its typically mild course, imparted lifelong immunity in those who contracted it. The risk of serious complications or death from measles has always been overwhelmingly minimal, in other words, with previous generations viewing it as something of a rite of passage.

Fast forward to today and all rationality and common sense has gone out the window on this issue. The media is reporting a few isolated cases of measles as if it were the black plague, calling for those who don't vaccinate their children to be ostracized from their communities or even jailed for "putting others at unnecessary risk." But where are the facts in all this unsubstantiated mania, which unfairly tags the unvaccinated as dangerous lepers?

Once again, the media is discarding factual reporting in favor of mindless sensationalism, attributing an alleged measles resurgence -- even this claim is specious -- to the unvaccinated. Whether or not this claim is actually true pales in importance compared to the fact that measles really isn't much of a threat in the first place. The measles vaccine, on the other hand, is a whole different story.

"There have been no measles deaths reported in the U.S. since 2003," the Associate Press reported based off statements made by Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Meanwhile, VAERS, which captures only a very small percentage of the actual number of injuries and deaths associated with measles vaccines, reports at least 108 deaths associated with measles vaccines since 2003. Of these, a shocking 96 deaths were reported in conjunction with MMR, which is now the preferred vaccine for measles immunization.

Measles deaths were virtually nonexistent prior to introduction of vaccine, which is now triggering outbreaks. Some will try to argue that measles deaths are essentially nonexistent now because of measles vaccines, the first of which was introduced in 1963. But this argument holds no water -- U.S. measles mortality data shows that deaths from measles rapidly declined in the years leading up to when the first vaccine was introduced, validating the success of improved sanitation and better nutrition in making measles a non-problem.

This plotted graph from HealthSentinel.com visually illustrates this:

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"What you may not have heard, is that by 1963, the death rate from measles in the United States had already dropped by approximately 98%," explains the International Medical Council on Vaccination (IMCV).

Not long after it was introduced, the first measles vaccine was actually found to manifest worse symptoms of measles in vaccinated patients than if they hadn't gotten the vaccine at all. The vaccine also suppressed the normal rash and fever associated with measles, obstructing the normal immune response and ultimately leading to future health problems for vaccinated individuals once they reached adulthood.

"[W]hereas natural measles exposure generally left the person with reliable lifelong immunity, measles vaccines leave the individual with waning immunity," adds IMCV. "This dynamic of waning immunity means we will probably see measles epidemics even in highly vaccinated populations."