By Jean Andrews
This is a very important article by Jean Andrews. She talks about developmental issues that can happen to unvaccinated children. She describes the paradox of creating a greater need for special education and austerity programs that limit those services. Finally, she writes that refusal to vaccinate children doesn’t only impact those children, but all the others who are forced to come in contact with them.
Rubella, rubeola, and the mumps viruses are like mythical Grendel, the eighth-century monster who eats up all the townspeople. The MMR vaccine is like the hero-warrior, Beowulf, who comes to the rescue. In today’s world, Grendel is back. But where is Beowulf?
As a middle school teacher, in 1975, at a state school for deaf students, I learned on the first day that twenty-five percent of my thirty students were rubella babies. These were children born deaf in the early 1960s as a result of their mothers having contracted the rubella virus in utero during the first trimester. This vicious virus attacked the fetus during the early development of vision, hearing, the heart, the brain, and other organs. These rubella-caused effects were hearing loss and, in some cases, vision loss, brain and neurological damage, and heart problems, which emerge at birth and even manifest symptoms decades later.
Mothers of my middle school students were ten years too early for the measles vaccine, as the first rubella vaccine was not developed in the US until the late 1960s. And it wasn’t until 1971 that the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella was introduced worldwide. This vaccine came about due to the twelve point five million people affected by the Rubella epidemic from 1963 through 1965, with more than twenty thousand babies born with the congenital rubella syndrome.
In 1975, my students’ primary disability was being deaf, although some had minor difficulties in learning. But they thrived in a signing environment with an adapted curriculum and special programs. However, other rubella babies required even more adapted education as they were born with severe sensory, physical, and cognitive disabilities. These students attended a nearby state school that served deaf children with additional disabilities, including DeafBlind, intellectually challenged, learning disabled, physical disabilities, neurological problems, or those with a combination of additional disabilities.
These deaf students made up the Rubella Bulge, a large group born during the Rubella Epidemic of 1963-1965. As a result, throughout the nation, additional preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and even postsecondary programs had to be set up as the rubella bubble progressed through the educational system.
While my middle-schoolers had mothers who contracted rubella or German measles during pregnancy, another type of measles virus, rubeola, was also infecting children. The rubeola virus appears on the skin with a dark, spotty rash. However, the infection can cause brain inflammation, intellectual disabilities, hearing loss, vision problems, and neurological problems, all of which may require special education.
Rubeola, rubella, and mumps are highly contagious but are preventable with the MMR vaccine, which protects against all three diseases. These three childhood diseases have been closely eliminated due to the high rate of childhood vaccinations required before children enter school.
However, in the current political climate, this has changed. Case in point is the recent outbreak of measles in West Texas among children whose parents failed or refused to have them vaccinated. Close to eight hundred cases of rubeola measles were confirmed, and two children died.
One would expect that governors, legislators, pastors, and online influencers would leap into action. They have—but in opposite directions. Some state lawmakers who listen to science are passing their own laws mandating the vaccines to protect their children. Others are not. For example, lawmakers and leaders in Texas, Florida, and other states ignore the science, believing that mandated vaccines are an infringement on citizens’ rights, so they are passing laws that say childhood vaccines are not mandated. This caveman thinking not only puts their children and grandchildren at risk, but also those children who sit next to them in the classroom or on the playgrounds. Not requiring childhood vaccinations for rubeola, mumps, and rubella is ethically reprehensible, professionally irresponsible, and, to be blunt, malpractice
and child abuse. And with the cuts in special education, particularly deaf education across the nation, children and their families will not only lack accurate medical information but will also have limited follow-up educational services.
