Mother Jones

TAKE THIS WAIVER AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING

Why are doctors helping patients skip their shots?

IN DECEMBER 2014, an 11-year-old visited a Disney theme park in California and afterward got a rash. It was measles, and over the next several weeks the disease spread to at least 136 Californians, as well as people in seven other states and two foreign countries.

This was no fluke case. Though measles was supposedly eliminated in the United States in 2000—thanks to the highly effective measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR)—it has come roaring back, with 667 confirmed cases nationwide in 2014 alone.

Among the California patients in the Disney outbreak, at

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