Dr. Peter Hotez doesn’t have much patience for anti-vaxxers refusing to take precautions against a potentially deadly measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico because they think it causes autism.
Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, wrote a book about his personal experience as an “autism dad,” vaccine scientist and pediatrician titled Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.
So far this year, 124 cases of measles have been reported in New Mexico and Texas — primarily in the South Plains’ Gaines and Terry counties — and Hotez said it could dwarf the last outbreak that occurred in New York and New Jersey in 2018 and 2019.
“This is a very large and dangerous epidemic,” he said. “I think we’re still in the early stages of this. I believe this is going to continue to accelerate. One reason I say that is you’ve got really low vaccination rates in many parts of West Texas.”
Hotez is world-renowned for his work, creating a low-cost coronavirus vaccine with Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Deemed “Corbevax,” the vaccine won emergency use authorization in India and the doctors were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
The incubation period of measles — the time from when one is exposed to the virus to when they develop symptoms — is around 12 to 13 days, Hotez said.
“Every time you have a new cohort of kids or adults getting infected, you know that two weeks later there’s going to be another round,” he said. “I think you’re going to start seeing these continued jumps and expansions of measles across a lot of West Texas and to New Mexico and maybe even going up to Oklahoma.”
After more than 28,000 measles hospitalizations were reported in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the World Health Organization declared in 2000 that measles was eradicated in America. Since then, however, it’s been reintroduced by international travelers. Additionally, an anti-vaccination sentiment that peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed for the reemergence of measles outbreaks, Hotez said.
Measles is an airborne virus that spreads through breathing, coughing and sneezing. It is highly contagious and those infected can experience high fever, cold symptoms, and full-body rash. Research shows it can lead to serious complications among children, pregnant women, and those with compromised immune systems. Of the 124 cases currently reported in Texas and New Mexico, just 18 of the infected individuals are over the age of 18.
So what do Harris County residents need to do?
“If you’re unvaccinated and you’ve been exposed to the measles virus, if you get your vaccine within 72 hours, you can have a big impact on reducing the severity or even preventing the illness,” Hotez said. “The most important message to get out is, if you’re in West Texas and have not been vaccinated — or really anywhere and not been vaccinated, you should still go out and get the vaccine, even if you’ve been exposed to the virus.”
The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is considered “extremely safe” and is over 97 percent effective against measles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Those born before 1957 are probably immune, Hotez added.
“At that point, measles was so ubiquitous that you just should assume you likely were infected and therefore have protective immunity,” he said.
Those born later may have received a single vaccine dose that can last for decades, he added.
“A single dose is only around 90 percent protective,” Hotez said. “Therefore if you’re living in a measles-endemic area or you’re traveling to a measles-endemic area, you should probably get that second dose.”
The doctor suggested that anyone getting a second dose consult with their physician first because it is a live virus vaccine and those taking medication for autoimmune diseases or undergoing cancer treatment are precluded from taking it.
Hotez recently published a journal article titled “It Won’t End With COVID: Countering the Next Phase of American Antivaccine Activism.” An accompanying infographic compares the dangers of being unvaccinated and getting measles compared to the rare side effects of the MMR vaccine.
Hotez said he began fighting the anti-vaccine lobby in the late 1990s when a British medical journal published an article claiming the MMR vaccine causes autism.
“It turned out to be false; that wasn’t true,” he said. “There is no link between vaccines and autism. I’m a vaccine scientist. I make low-cost vaccines for global health, but I’m also the parent of an adult daughter with autism and intellectual disabilities who lives with us in Houston.”
He wrote the book Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, published in 2018, to “go up against [now-U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] and the anti-vaccine lobby.”
“About a decade ago, you started to see this health freedom movement accelerate, and here is where it became kind of entangled in Texas politics,” Hotez said.
“About a decade ago, you started to see this health freedom movement accelerate, and here is where it became kind of entangled in Texas politics.”
Several Republican-sponsored bills have been filed in the current legislative session aimed at eliminating vaccine mandates and supporting parents’ rights to choose what medical care they receive. Texas children are required to have the MMR vaccine to enroll in school, but parents can file a personal belief exemption to opt-out.
A 2024 CDC study found that the United States saved $540 billion by immunizing children born between 1994 and 2023, preventing illness, costly hospitalizations and more than 1.1 million deaths.
The danger of buying into the panic that a vaccine could cause autism is twofold, Hotez explained.
“We know what autism is and how it begins, how the neurodevelopmental processes of autism occur in pregnancy before a child ever sees a vaccine,” he said. “Second, it makes your child vulnerable. Measles is a severe illness. Twenty percent of the kids [infected with measles] require hospitalization for measles pneumonia or measles encephalitis or neurologic impairment or dehydration because of measles diarrhea. And don’t forget measles is still a leading cause of childhood death globally.
“It’s a bad actor and that’s not something you want to make your child vulnerable to.”
