A fourth person in Pennsylvania has died of measles, the state health department confirmed Tuesday. The latest death was in an unvaccinated 18-year-old resident of Mifflin County.

In the announcement, the state health department also confirmed a county coroner's report over the weekend of the death of an unvaccinated 40-year-old woman in Jefferson County. The state had previously reported two deaths in Lancaster County; both were infants—a newborn boy and a 6-week-old girl, both too young to be vaccinated.

According to the Mifflin County coroner, Andrea L. Alcalde, the 18-year-old's cause of death was determined to be acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), which is a rare but known severe complication of measles. The condition is characterized by a rapidly progressing autoimmune disorder in which aberrant inflammation from an infection strips away the protective coverings of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Before measles vaccines were widely used, ADEM was commonly associated with measles, though other viral infections can also spur its development.

Read full article

Comments

Two unvaccinated people have died from measles in Pennsylvania, state health officials confirmed Tuesday.

They are the first measles deaths reported in Pennsylvania in 35 years and the first deaths reported in the US in 2026. Last year, the US saw three measles deaths: two in otherwise-healthy but unvaccinated school-age children in Texas and one in an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico. Prior to those deaths, the US had not seen a measles death since 2015, when a woman with underlying conditions became severely ill.

Citing privacy, health officials in Pennsylvania are not providing information on the people who died beyond that they were unvaccinated and were residents of Lancaster County. Officials noted that the deaths are among 393 confirmed cases reported this year across 28 counties in the state.

Read full article

Comments

Backlash to Trump's vaccine order on Monday has been swift and sharp, with various public health and medical organizations and independent experts calling it "dangerous," "unscientific," "false and misleading," "so wrong," and saying it is "putting children's health at risk."

The responses are unsurprising; the medical and health communities have consistently fought against the anti-vaccine, anti-science agendas pushed by Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has no background in science, medicine, or public health. The American Academy of Pediatrics—which called the order "not only disheartening but dangerous"—is leading a lawsuit against previous changes to federal childhood vaccine recommendations under Trump and Kennedy. In March, the organization, along with other medical groups, won a temporary injunction reversing most of the changes.

However, less expected among the scorn for Trump's order is the immediate pushback from the pharmaceutical industry.

Read full article

Comments

President Trump signed an executive order Monday that makes sweeping, unilateral changes to federal vaccine recommendations. The order aims to reduce the number of lifesaving vaccines all children are recommended to get—from 18 to 11—while also splitting them up and spacing them out over more time and more medical visits.

The vaccine changes are not backed by evidence or spurred by new findings. Rather, they are based on false anti-vaccine fearmongering about harms, including the debunked claim that they cause autism, and misinformation that multiple vaccinations can "overwhelm" children's immune systems. This false claim has also been repeatedly debunked and explained.

During a signing event at the White House on Monday afternoon, Trump falsely claimed that pediatricians "have a vaccination that looks like the size of a bottle of soda," that is "poured into a little child's body, and bad things happen in too many cases. This is an explosion; this is an epidemic," Trump said.

Read full article

Comments