Currently, we are seeing a rare outbreak of measles in the U.S. Although most ch

Question

Currently, we are seeing a rare outbreak of measles in the U.S. Although most children are vaccinated, this only gives an individual person direct immunity, and then only for their personal lifespan. "Herd immunity" is a term that means enough people are vaccinated that transmission of the disease is very unlikely if someone DOES get infected, and it also means that the risk of infection should be very low since so few people would be carrying the disease. Historically, those children who got measles suffered vision and hearing damage and risked death. Ignoring the anti-vaccination issue, could humans evolve to become measles-resistant? Why or why not? Fully justify your answer.

Explanation / Answer

The measles vaccination involves the attenuated strain of this measles, which is given to boost the immunity of a person. Once the child is vaccinated he/she will never get measles in their lifetime. But the other complications like vision and hearing damage are due to the reactivation of these attenuated strains inside the human body. When the measles vaccine is given to the child some of these measles in the cell will not be cleared by the immune system and the remains of these measles in the human body may get activated at some point of time during the lifetime. Some of the role is also played by the human evolution which gives the measles to get reactivated to cause the disease again in the vaccinated child. Humans evolving to become measles resistant totally depends on how the immune system behaves when the person is contracted with measles if the immune system evolves sufficiently to counteract the measles then this scenario is possible.

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