STAT May 7, 2024
At the end of February 1960, my healthy, precocious sister Marcie was halfway through the fourth grade when she contracted measles from a classmate who lived down the street. Their cases were among the nearly 500,000 that year, before the measles vaccination program began in the U.S. in 1963. For every 1,000 people who get measles, one develops measles encephalitis, which can cause permanent brain damage. Marcie was one.
Although I think about Marcie every day, the recent rise in measles cases in the U.S. and around the world has me thinking about her even more.
I was only 6 years old at the time, but the gravity of my sister’s illness wasn’t lost on me (and today the very...
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