By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Virginia’s Department of Health is recommending infants ages 6 to 11 months receive a MMR vaccine — earlier than the age recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Doctors and other vaccine experts told The Defender that Virginia’s guidance is “reckless” and “not grounded in science.”

The state’s recommendations also include an accelerated measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination schedule, advising that infants get the second dose in the two-dose MMR series 28 days after the first.

Virginia’s recommendation comes in response to a recent measles outbreak in Buckingham County, which as of Tuesday had reached 54 cases.

The state’s MMR vaccine guidance was included in a May 13 letter from Virginia State Health Commissioner Cameron Webb. The recommendations call for infants ages 6 to 11 months to “get an early dose of the MMR vaccine,” and two more doses at the AAP’s recommended ages, at least 28 days apart.

The CDC and AAP recommend a minimum age of 12 months for MMR vaccination, except in “special situations,” such as international travel.

Dr. Paige Perriello, a Charlottesville-based pediatrician, told local news outlet 29 News-WVIR that while the two-dose MMR series is typically started at 12 months, the vaccine can be administered earlier “during an outbreak” of measles.

According to the Virginia Department of Health’s measles dashboard, of the 54 reported cases, only 6 (11%) have resulted in hospitalization. No deaths have been reported.

Dr. Michelle Perro, a pediatrician and author of “Making Our Children Well — A Parent’s Guidebook: Empowering Healthy Families with Nutrition and Homeopathy,” told The Defender that the recent cluster of measles cases in Virginia is far from an outbreak.

“Even at 54 cases across an entire state, we’re talking about an illness with a case fatality rate near zero in the developed world,” Perro said. “The modern risk of severe outcomes from measles in the U.S. is extraordinarily low.”

Perro said Virginia’s recommendations are “reckless in several ways.” She said infants under age 1 are more susceptible to vaccine injury, because “the infant blood-brain barrier and immune system are even less developed at that age.”

“You’re injecting a live attenuated virus cocktail into a system with minimal capacity to handle it safely,” Perro said.

Perro also criticized the “accelerated two-dose schedule,” which calls for the second dose for infants under age 1 to be administered 28 days after the first dose, instead of the standard schedule, which spaces out the doses over several years.

Currently, the recommended CDC and AAP childhood vaccination schedules call for a two-dose series of the MMR vaccine at 12-15 months and another two-dose series between the ages of 4 and 6.

“Compressing the dosing interval amplifies the immunological assault and increases the probability of adverse events,” Perro said. “There’s a reason the standard schedule spaces these out over years, and it’s not just convenience.”

Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, also a pediatrician, noted that “more than 60 potential side effects” are listed in the package insert for Merck’s MMR vaccine, the only MMR shot licensed in the U.S.

Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said Virginia’s policy is “not grounded in science” and said that “babies may be injured or die as a result.”

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, said the MMR vaccine, which combines three live viruses, also poses a significant autism risk, “in boys and especially black boys, if the vaccines are given on time.”

“This situation could only get worse by giving these untested shots early,” Hooker added.

A spokesperson for Virginia’s Department of Health was unable to provide comment by press time.

MMR shots deadlier than measles, data show

Perro said the MMR vaccine has a “documented risk profile.” She cited data from the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). As of April, VAERS identified 299 U.S. reports of deaths associated with the MMR or MMRV (measles-mumps-rubella-varicella) vaccines.

“The temporal clustering is stunning, as 52.8% of those deaths occurred within 14 days of vaccination, and over 60% were in children under 2 years old, concentrated right in the 12- to 15-month window when the first dose is administered. That’s not random background noise,” Perro said.

Perro said VAERS data show that in recent decades, the MMR and MMRV shots have proven to be deadlier than measles itself in the U.S.

“Since 1995, 193 U.S. MMR/MMRV-associated deaths have been reported to VAERS compared to just 7 measles-infection deaths in the same period. That’s a 2,657% higher count of reported vaccine-associated deaths versus deaths from the disease itself,” Perro said.

Mumper agreed. In an interview with CHD.TV last week, she said that many childhood deaths that occur soon after routine vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, are “misattributed to SIDS,” or sudden infant death syndrome.

“What we see when we look at that critically is that about 75% of those babies, 78% occur within the first seven days post-vaccination. And so, you shouldn’t have this temporal association with a vaccine,” Mumper said.

Merck ‘overfilled’ MMR vaccine with live mumps virus

Hooker said the MMR vaccine “in its current form has never been tested.”

“We know that there is no ‘upper cap’ on the amount of measles, mumps or rubella virus added to the vaccine and that some reports indicate these levels could be several times higher than what was originally tested and approved in FDA clinical trials,” Hooker said.

An expert report released in 2024 by Dr. David Kessler, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), found that for decades, Merck misrepresented the efficacy of its MMR vaccine.

Merck allegedly “overfilled” the vaccine with live mumps virus to meet efficacy targets despite the lack of safety testing — a practice that may continue today, and which the company appears to have concealed from public health agencies.

By 1998, regulatory labeling review had revealed that the mumps component of Merck’s MMRII did not maintain the stated potency over its shelf-life, in violation of FDA regulations.

Rather than recalling the vaccine or attempting to develop a different formula, the company spent years trying to develop new and more sensitive ways to test the existing vaccine that would show high efficacy results, so it would still be in compliance with regulatory requirements and allow Merck to maintain its exclusive license.

The company did not inform the vaccine recipients, providers or purchasers — including the CDC, which purchased the drug through its Vaccines for Children Program — that its vaccine was out of compliance.

In 2024, a federal appeals court dismissed a 2010 lawsuit alleging that Merck misled the CDC by “omitting, concealing and misrepresenting” information about the potency of its mumps vaccine.

In a presentation last year, former Merck virologist-turned-whistleblower Stephen Krahling, one of the plaintiffs in the 2010 lawsuit, said, “the very same problem that afflicted the mumps component also plagued the measles and rubella components, too. Merck did a lot of different things to try and cover up the problem.”

Krahling said Merck covered up the vaccine’s lack of efficacy by adding more measles virus to the MMR vaccine — but never disclosed these changes.

“Pediatricians do not know how much virus they are injecting into your children when they administer a dose of MMR,” Krahling said.

“Two things are being hidden here: the amount that gets injected and the number of times over the history of that vaccine that they’ve changed the amount that they put in it. And it’s been changed many times. Always increasing it,” he said.

Virginia’s MMR vaccine guidance would be ‘impossible’ if vaccine makers were legally liable for injuries

In an interview with NPR affiliate WMRA, Lisa M. Lee, Ph.D., an epidemiologist and bioethicist at Virginia Tech University, said that while there were no confirmed measles cases in Buckingham County Public Schools despite the local outbreak, she suggested the outbreak was nevertheless likely due to unvaccinated children.

“Because this particular virus is so contagious, we are looking at what public health gets worried about is any community that has fewer than 95% of people immunized,” Lee said.

Yet, “Buckingham County schools specifically reported relatively small numbers of students with incomplete vaccinations — just four kids between Buckingham County Primary School and Central Virginia Christian School,” WMRA reported.

Virginia’s recommendations call for unvaccinated children and adults, and those who have never had a measles infection, to get vaccinated. Perro said this advice might actually exacerbate the spread of measles.

“The reflexive ‘vaccinate everyone in the vicinity’ approach ignores the fact that mass vaccination during an outbreak can actually prolong transmission in certain scenarios by causing vaccinated individuals to shed vaccine-strain virus,” Perro said.

Mumper said measles outbreaks are possible even without “gaps in vaccination coverage.” She said 1%-10% of those who receive the MMR vaccine experience primary vaccine failure, where the vaccine fails to lead to the development of antibodies.

She added that secondary vaccine failure, where there is waning immunity over time, is even more common.

Holland said the immunity shield that Merck and other vaccine makers enjoy under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 has enabled Virginia authorities to proceed with their current recommendations.

“This kind of medical recommendation would be impossible if Merck, the only MMR vaccine manufacturer, was liable for its vaccines, as it is for other consumer products, including drugs. People would be able to sue for injuries and deaths from the MMR; Merck would be accountable,” Holland said.

Mumper said a better strategy would be to “promote the use of Vitamin A in the oily liquid form,” noting that several studies have found that vitamin A deficiency is a “primary risk factor” in the onset of measles.

Related articles in The Defender

• Breaking: Appeals Court Dismisses Whistleblower Lawsuit Against Merck Over MMR Vaccine
• MedPage Today Admits Mumps Vaccine Doesn’t Work, Shrugs Off RFK Jr.’s Concerns by Blaming His Law Career
• ‘Highly Confidential’: Former FDA Chief Details Fraud in Merck’s Testing, Marketing of Mumps Vaccine
• ‘Fraud, Pure and Simple’: Merck Mumps Vaccine May Contain Up to 4 Times Approved Amount of Live Virus
• Oklahoma, Louisiana to Require Coroners Include Vaccine Records in SIDS Autopsies
• Media Reports of Vitamin A Toxicity in Kids Being Treated for Measles ‘Misleading,’ Doctor Says

The post ‘Reckless’: Virginia Recommends MMR Vaccine for Infants as Young as 6 Months appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

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