I am a strong supporter of nostalgia. I am a child of the nineties and I understand shoulder pads and I think Madonna is cool, or at least relevant. But nostalgia has no place in healthcare. Diseases of the past, like small pox, polio and measles, regardless of melancholia, should stay in the past. These infections killed and disabled millions of people until we started mass vaccination and eradicated them.

Measles was pretty much eradicated at the turn of the century but it’s reared its ugly head again. Many of us have had measles and, although it was a pain at the time, we recovered after a relatively uneventful illness. However, measles is much more serious than an inconvenience. A small proportion of patients, usually children, will develop an inflammation of the brain and they will die from it. Those who survive are permanently disabled. Measles is not a funny little disease of itchy kids. It’s fatal. Which is why we vaccinate for it.

There is currently an outbreak of measles in New York. Several people have been hospitalized. Some of them are babies, who were too young to be vaccinated and are now intubated in intensive care units fighting against a disease that will probably kill or disable them for life.

This is not just another American problem. If it’s been detected somewhere in the world, then everyone is at risk. Viruses know no barriers; we learnt that lesson very painfully with Avian flu. This was not supposed to happen. We had not seen measles in over 10 years and now kids are on ventilators from respiratory failure. Here’s what happened. A group of anti-vaccination people with all sorts of myths and unfounded theories happened. Lunacy and mass hysteria ensued and here’s the fine result.

The anti-vaccine lobby is out there claiming that vaccines aren’t safe, that vaccination causes autism and all sorts of developmental problems. Crock of rubbish, based on nothing. The problem when lobbies say these things is that they don’t need evidence; they only need to stir up emotions. And when they are wrong, they don’t need to retract anything; there is nothing official about their endorsements, no responsibility.

The issue of safety in vaccination has been analysed scientifically. Vaccines are safe. Yet, people continue to make the incomprehensible choice to refuse it anyway. I have a problem with anti-vaccine people.

Not only are they putting their own children at risk but they are putting others at risk as well. Refusing a vaccine is not an individual choice because its effects are not constrained to the individual. I am as outraged as I am alarmed. I believe in choice and I believe in autonomy but I also believe in accountability. I eagerly await the day when one of those anti-vaccine lobbyists will show me the evidence to back their ludicrous claims. Maybe we can become friends and together we can explain their selfi shness to the parents of the little baby on a ventilator.