Earlier this year a tiny, frail, disabled, 67 year old pensioner was mugged as he put out the trash in the northern English city of Gateshead. His 25 year old assailant was desperate for money to pay for "legal high" drugs but went away with nothing. His victim, Alan Barnes, was left with a broken collar bone and was terrified to return to the sparse single storey home with no garden he lived in. He moved in with his sister to feel safe.
Last week Mr Barnes moved into a new house courtesy of a fund raising page set up by a local beautician who was horrified at the crime. The appeal eventually raised over £330,000 (@US$ 500,000) in donations from all over the world, in less than a week. The money was enough to buy the house with sufficient left over to refurbish it as needed and, hopefully, to allow Mr Barnes to have a break in the West Indies he has dreamed of.
His attacker, Richard Gatiss has been convicted and sentenced to four years in jail. Mr Barnes who is a church goer, while satisfied at the sentence, has expressed compassion for Gatiss.
Mr Barnes said hoped Gatiss, who suffers from drug problems, can turn his life around in prison.
"I hope if he goes to jail he will get some help in there. He's only 25, he's got plenty of time to change his life still."
"I just hope he gets his life turned around. That would be a happy ending."
The beautician, Katie Cutler has set up a charity foundation with the aim of raising £1million to help other vulnerable people.
The horrified reaction to the attack on Mr Barnes was not surprising given his circumstances. He is barely 4ft6 and weighs around 80lbs. He has been disabled from birth with severe visual impairment and other disabilities which have affected his physical appearance. Apparently he loves BBC Radio 4. His mother was told that he would be unlikely to survive to his first birthday. It is perhaps a tribute to the National Health Service, which was introduced around the time he was born, that he is alive today.
Here is the kicker, his disabilities are a result of his mother contracting German Measles during her pregnancy with Alan. German Measles is medically known as Rubella - the R in the MMR vaccine. Its use meant that by 2005 the Washington Post headlined that the Rubella virus had been Eliminated in the United States and reminded its readers:
Mild and often entirely unnoticed in children, rubella infection can be devastating to developing fetuses. A woman infected with the virus in the first three months of pregnancy will probably suffer miscarriage, or deliver a stillborn or permanently disabled child. In the last great U.S. epidemic of rubella -- 40 years ago, before there was a vaccine against the disease -- about 12,000 babies were born deaf or deaf and blind.
In 1998 the disgraced ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield published his fraudulent paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism and bowel diseases. This was the catalyst for the anti-vaccination movement although Wakefield had suggested that parents get separate vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella. As these were not available free on the NHS, they would have to pay privately. The then Dr Wakefield ran clinics to provide this service.
The scare has had two effects. Firstly, with lower "herd immunity", the virus can spread more easily. The effect increases as the number of refusers increases and numbers of unvaccinated children balloons. More worryingly; the first cohorts of unvaccinated babies are reaching child bearing age. By 2012, the CDC were reporting on cases of congenital rubella syndrome - birth defects caused by the virus' damage. Rubella cases were reassuringly labeled as "imported" or, more worryingly from an "unknown source" but I will quote their report on one case of a baby affected by it in the womb.
Infant A. In February 2012, an infant born in Maryland at 36 weeks' gestation and weighing 4.2 lbs (1,910 g) was noted at birth to have congenital heart defects, hyperpigmented skin lesions, cataracts, cerebral edema, and pericardial effusion. Hearing impairment was suspected after the infant failed a hearing screening test before hospital discharge in February, and bilateral profound hearing impairment was diagnosed by an audiologist in June. Surgical procedures for correction of congenital heart defects and cataracts were performed in February and June, respectively. During eye surgery, the infant experienced breathing difficulties and went into cardiac arrest. Following stabilization, the infant was admitted to the pediatric intensive-care unit for observation and was later discharged.
The importance of herd immunity can be seen from the case of
Japan where initially the rubella vaccine was only given to girls;
Japan first introduced the rubella vaccine into its national immunisation programme in 1976 but it was only given to junior secondary school girls. In 1989, Japan introduced the MMR vaccine for all children aged one to six, but that left a 13-year gap where no boys were immunised.
....
But men still catch the disease and in Japan, where rubella cases have shot up to over 10,000 cases, about 77% of them are in young men aged between 20 and 40.
Japan has taken steps to reduce the number of unvaccinated children. The anti-vax movement in the USA is increasing the number so herd immunity is lower. Now an increasing cohort of young unvaccinated women are starting their childbearing years. How many have immunity because of a case in infancy is unknown but given the levels of herd immunity in their childhood, the number must be low. A "perfect storm" is starting to brew.