You’ve seen the recent headlines and heard the news reports, but they’re only part of this deadly virus’s story. This week we’re covering the rest. We take you on a one-of-a-kind tour of measles, exploring how this vaccine-preventable virus can wriggle its way into your cells and cause short-term misery and long-term damage. Then we trace the history of this notorious killer from its bovine beginnings to the devastation it wreaked on unexposed populations. The tour ends with a look at measles by the numbers around the world today. If you take home one souvenir from this tour, let it be gratitude for vaccines!
| History | Biology |
| Cliff, Andrew David, Peter Haggett, and Matthew Smallman-Raynor. Measles: an historical geography of a major human viral disease: from global expansion to local retreat, 1840-1990. Blackwell, 1993. | Mina, Michael J., et al. “Long-term measles-induced immunomodulation increases overall childhood infectious disease mortality.” Science 348.6235 (2015): 694-699. |
| Morens, David M. “Measles in Fiji, 1875: thoughts on the history of emerging infectious diseases.” Pacific Health Dialog 5 (1998): 119-128. | Moss, William J., and Diane E. Griffin. “Global measles elimination.” Nature Reviews Microbiology 4.12 (2006): 900. |
| Cambridge World History of Human Disease edited by Kenneth Kiple | Clemmons, Nakia S., et al. “Incidence of measles in the United States, 2001-2015.” Jama 318.13 (2017): 1279-1281. |
| Global Measles and Rubella UpdateJune 2018, WHO | |
| Olive, Jacqueline K., et al. “The state of the antivaccine movement in the United States: A focused examination of nonmedical exemptions in states and counties.” PLoS medicine 15.6 (2018): e1002578. |
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