Public Health Experts Debunk Common Myths About Measles Vaccine

Part five of Tragedy in Paradise, an Atlanta News First investigation shedding light on potential consequences of declining vaccination rates.

ATLANTA, Ga. —With misinformation about vaccines spreading widely online, two Emory University professors are pushing back with science.

In an interview with Atlanta News First Investigates, Dr. Jodie Guest and Dr. Robert Bednarczyk, both epidemiology experts at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, tackled some of the most common myths about the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

The U.S. has reported more than 1,300 measles cases this year, the highest in more than three decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least six of those cases were in Georgia, and none of the patients were vaccinated.

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Guest, senior vice chair of the Department of Epidemiology, dismissed the claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism. “We know that from many, many studies of very high scientific rigor that have consistently shown that there is no correlation,” she said, pointing to the retracted 1990s study that fueled the myth.

Bednarczyk, an associate professor of global health, addressed another falsehood — that the vaccine contains DNA from aborted fetuses. “There’s no remnants of those cells in there at all,” he said. “All that is fully cleared out.”

The professors also answered questions about mercury, immune system impact and how long the measles vaccine protection lasts.