{"id":11442,"date":"2025-02-27T13:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T18:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=11442"},"modified":"2025-02-27T13:37:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T18:37:00","slug":"tragic-childhood-death-from-measles-reminds-us-that-some-dont-understand-either-the-medical-significance-or-the-human-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/tragic-childhood-death-from-measles-reminds-us-that-some-dont-understand-either-the-medical-significance-or-the-human-heart\/2025\/02\/27\/","title":{"rendered":"Tragic Childhood Death from Measles Reminds Us That Some Don’t Understand Either the Medical Significance or the Human Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

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My ID colleague Dr. Adam Ratner, Chief of Pediatric ID at NYU Medical Center, just published an insightful and remarkably timely book called Booster Shots:\u00a0 The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children’s Health<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chapter Six is entitled “Making Nothing Happen,” and it starts off with this especially profound paragraph:<\/p>\n

Prevention can be a tough business. A pediatrician talks to a parent about choking hazards or sleep positions or bike helmets, but she never gets to know which specific children that advice has helped. You can\u2019t see prevention unless you broaden your view, looking at populations over time. Getting rid of leaded gasoline decreases childhood lead poisoning; changing recommendations about infant sleep positions lowers the risk of sudden infant death syndrome. But you don’t get to know which kids benefited — who would have not worn that helmet and had the bike accident, tipped over that unsecured television stand, died of SIDS… Vaccines are one of our best tools for prevention. They are amazing inventions that prevent serious diseases so kids can get on with their lives. But you never really know exactly who they helped. Vaccines are masters in making nothing happen.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I emphasized the last sentence, because it is the opposite of this “nothing” that happened to that poor child in Texas — who by not receiving their recommended measles vaccine, missed the opportunity for “nothing” and now is tragically dead.<\/p>\n

And some of the responses to this case, including from the very person charged with running our Department of Health and Human Services<\/a>, reveal significant weaknesses in understanding both the medical significance of the case, and, just as damningly, the human heart — how we feel<\/em> when reading about a childhood death. These comments clearly aim to downplay the importance of this outbreak in general, and the death of this child in particular, so I’ll follow them with corrections:<\/p>\n