Why Did Measles Outbreak In Turkey Again?

The most important thing to do in order not to become a panic wave and to prevent the increase in the measles cases detected in our country recently is to be vaccinated against measles. However, due to some unfounded allegations made by a British so-called doctor. “anti-vaccine” has been around for a while.

By causing such a false perception, it plays an important role in the increase in measles cases in Turkey day by day. Let’s take a look at who the impostor Andrew Wakefield is and what he has done in this regard.

First of all, let’s talk about the main causes of measles in our country. In fact, the re-increase of this disease comes together under two different headings: Anti-vaccination and irregular migration.

With the effect of being free, Turkey was one of the countries with a very high rate of measles vaccination until today. However, the unfounded claims that emerged in the COVID-19 pandemic also apply to vaccinations applied for other ailments as well as this disease. a great deal of doubt caused it.

With the addition of asylum seekers to these prejudices, things started to get messy. asylum seekers, often reject these vaccination practices due to various cultural differences; Sometimes, even the health workers’ voices about the effects of measles were not effective.

At this point, while measles has not yet turned into an epidemic, Necessary warnings have been made by the government andVaccination campaigns should be started if necessary.

measles vaccine, It has been in use since the 1960s and the long-term effects of this vaccine have been fully established..

In addition, the measles vaccine, along with rubella and mumps, is a must-have for every person. among the essential vaccines. Again, although this ailment is predominantly seen in children, adults can also get this disease and its consequences can be quite severe.

Let’s get to our main topic. There is someone who caused the anti-vaccination and started to influence the whole world with this wrong perception: Andrew Wakefield.

Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist and collaborating with 12 colleagues in 1998, wrote in a widely read medical journal in the world. A link between the MMR (Measles, Rubella, Mumps mix) vaccine and autism He published an article he claimed to be.

In this study, a live virus found in the MMR vaccine was It increases the permeability of the intestinal mucosa, then passes to the blood and brain, causing autism. was put forward. The reason for the team to make such a claim was that the same intestinal samples were found in all 12 children who were given the MMR vaccine in the clinic, after as little as one month.

In fact, in the article by Andrew Wakefield and 12 colleagues serious methodological flaws and for this reason, it was approached with suspicion by various scientists and started to be questioned.

At that time, about 50,000 children per month in the UK were receiving the MMR vaccine, and the fact that the study was conducted on only 12 children was unscientific.

In this study, there was no control group, which is considered an indispensable criterion for scientific experiments, and the findings were It was not compared with samples from children who were not vaccinated with MMR.. In addition, contrary to what is stated in the article, no harmful substance was encountered such as passing from the intestine to the blood and from the blood to the brain, and the remains of this vaccine were not detected.

Despite the inaccuracy of most of the information put forward by this article, which was written under the leadership of Wakefield, the issue raised was quite remarkable since human life was at stake, and Various media outlets are trying to report this quickly. started.

Then there was the fear and the waves of panic spread among families in England between 1998-2003. Decrease the MMR vaccination rate from 92% to 80% caused.

After such a massive smear campaign on vaccination studies, scientists began to meticulously investigate the relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.

For example in Denmark 500,000 children With a study on “There is no correlation between MMR vaccines and the incidence of autism, disease frequency is the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated children” detected.

Subsequently 28,000 children in Canada and 1.8 million in Finland As a result of extensive studies involving Andrew Wakefield’s allegations are completely unfounded. was clearly detected.

Also, there were serious ethical problems and conflicts of interest in Wakefield’s work.

In this type of scientific work, case studies should always be chosen randomly, but this scammer is working on it. 5 out of 8 children were the same clients of the lawyer suing the vaccine manufacturers.

Again, any financial support received in ethical terms should protect the impartiality of the studies, but Wakefield received £50,000 from the lawyers of these 5 children and he did not use this money in any work-related place.

Finally, during this research Wakefield’s patent for a competing mumps vaccine It was understood that the study was aimed at defaming the currently used vaccine and launching the vaccine of the company of which he is a partner.

In 2004, after these startling details emerged, 10 of the 12 people on the crook’s team announced that they had withdrawn from the study.

The journal, in which the article was published in 2010, made a public statement, due to falsification of the results of the study and unethical practices. He stated that he retracted the article.

In addition, Wakefield, who became a sensation with his studies and the article he published, was granted the title of doctor by a circular on May 24, 2010. serious professional misconduct withdrawn for reasons.

If we need to sum up; At such an important point where human life is above everything else, it should be unconscionable to carry out unrealistic works by pursuing certain interests. Because these baseless allegations It negatively affects thousands and even millions of people and pushes them to become “anti-vaccine” and the cost of this goes to serious places that cost lives.