Jim O’Neill, a former official in the Trump administration, says it’s time to revolutionize the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. He recommends breaking it up into three different, intentional shots. This proposal has been widely criticized by public health experts and is inconsistent with decades of medical literature. The administration’s criticism of the MMR vaccine has been escalated by the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This has raised alarm over possible dangers associated with these modifications.
O’Neill’s claims are particularly concerning given that they’re being made while the United States is battling a surge of measles cases. In just 2019, the CDC noticed 1,544 cases of measles, 92% of which were among unvaccinated people. The current outbreak continues to demonstrate the importance of maintaining high vaccination rates. Tragically, the disease has taken three lives, shining a spotlight on this urgent priority.
In a statement supporting O’Neill’s proposal, Jake Scott, an infectious disease doc at Stanford University, cut to the chase. He added that there is no scientific justification for splitting the MMR vaccine. He continued, “As a result, we have 1,544 measles cases this year, 92% in unvaccinated individuals, and 3 measles-related deaths. That’s the problem, of course — it isn’t that the vaccine is ineffective, as some have posited. O’Neill still has not provided one objective scientific reason for splitting up MMR. Not a single study, not a single safety concern, not a single piece of data.
Experts have cautioned that making changes to the MMR vaccine would make it so that children have an increased risk of becoming infected. Measles, mumps, and rubella monovalent vaccines are no longer manufactured or distributed within the United States. This lack of available space renders literally every logistical change not only impractical but impossible. In response to this, O’Neill has called on vaccine manufacturers to create safe monovalent vaccines that would replace the current combined MMR vaccine.
“I call on vaccine manufacturers to develop safe monovalent vaccines to replace the combined MMR and ‘break up the MMR shot into three totally separate shots’,” – Jim O’Neill
Scott went on to voice alarm over what the fallout would be if we actually changed vaccination policy. He noted that such a move could lead to “lower vaccination rates, more disease and more kids dying from preventable illness.” His worries are echoed by an increasing number of doctors who are concerned about what O’Neill’s recommendations would mean.
The idea of splitting up the MMR vaccine isn’t new. Innoculating against the anti-vax movement It all began with Andrew Wakefield, who in 1998 published a fraudulent paper that connected the MMR vaccine to increasing rates of autism. Wakefield’s study was later retracted because it was not scientifically valid and because of ethical violations. Despite this history, the same calls for damaging changes to vaccine protocols keep coming back around.
Evidence indicates that children who are given the combination vaccine are more likely to complete their vaccination series. Completion of the series is almost never achieved among children whose parents select single-antigen vaccines. U.S. children had a higher completion rate in a 2017 study, with 69% of children receiving the combination vaccine having completed their recommended series. By comparison, just 50% of people who got individual vaccines went on to complete their vaccinations. Moreover, there’s no data that giving those shots individually provides any advantage in safety or efficacy.
Children have a modestly elevated risk of experiencing febrile seizures in the 12 days following administration of the MMR vaccine. Despite these concerns, health professionals strongly stress that the benefits of vaccination far exceed this risk. The MMR vaccine has been given for more than a half century and has protected millions without more than a handful of issues socially significant.
William Moss, a leading figure in global public health policy, criticized O’Neill for attempting to skip public involvement to change vaccination guidelines. He said, “This is not the way to make policy.”
