Health officials in Washington declared a state of emergency Monday in response to the measles outbreak in Clark County, where 38 cases have been confirmed, according toClark County Public Health.
Clark County has a lower than average vaccination rate, which has led to the spread of the highly contagious virus. The majority of the people who have contracted measles have not been inoculated, according to The Washington Post. Data analyzed by the Post shows that 7 percent of children going into kindergarten in the 2017- 2018 school year had non-medical exemptions from needing vaccinations like the one for measles. The national average of children with non-medical exemptions is only 2 percent. The largest demographic affected by the virus is 1- to 10-year-olds, with 25 cases, according to Clark County records.
Art Caplan, the director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, told Boston Public Radio Wednesday that the high numbers of children with non-medical exemptions can be attributed to opportunistic doctors and uninformed parents.
“A few doctors, not many, but a few have been hanging out the shingle saying, 'You want an exemption? Show up at my office, bring your checkbook, and we will get you one,'” Caplan said.
Caplan’s solution to this problem is to revoke the licenses of any doctors participating in these exchanges. “You shouldn’t be selling your expertise for money that way and it's very important that we set up a standard of care,” he said.
Caplan also criticized parents who continue to believe vaccines are dangerous despite contrarian evidence.
“I don’t think I can point to harm attributed to the measles vaccine. And don’t write me about autism because we debunked that again and again,” Caplan said.
