Splitting the MMR vaccine into separate shots could harm children, history shows

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History tells us that President Trump’s executive order calling for the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to be split into separate shots could do real harm. If policymakers prevail on vaccine makers, it will mean more missed vaccine doses, and more sick kids. But first a lesson on where the shot comes from.

In March 1963, a 5-year-old girl named Jeryl Lynn woke up with a sore throat at 1 a.m. Her father, a six-foot-one widower who had lost his wife to breast cancer four months earlier, bent down and felt the lumps on her neck. He was a scientist at the pharmaceutical company Merck, and he checked “The Merck Manual,” a medical reference book. “Oh my God,” he said. “You’ve got the mumps.”

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