Alex Clark guest: “People don't die from measles in modern countries where children are well fed and well nourished”
Bob Sears on TPUSA's Culture Apothecary: “The media portrays measles as a deadly infection that's going to kill everyone left and right. That's not played out in our country for many decades now. It's not a fatal infection in a well-nourished nation.”
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From the June 22, 2026, edition of Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, posted on Spotify
ALEX CLARK (HOST): So what else could come back besides chickenpox?
BOB SEARS (GUEST): Measles could come back.
CLARK: Is that concerning?
SEARS: People don't die from measles in modern countries where children are well fed and well nourished.
CLARK: But what about these recent stories? I thought there were kids that died of measles.
SEARS: That is up for debate.
CLARK: What do you mean?
SEARS: There's some interesting information that has come out, very recent. The families of the kids who died of measles in Texas recently, that was, like, last year. I mean, this is all, you know, second, third hand, so I'm not a firsthand, you know, privy to this information. But what was has been reported and published on online is some lawyers hired some hired some doctors to review the medical records of those children who tragically died, and those children died from other infectious complications from other bacteria after they are already done with measles. The measles had already come and gone. They were better from measles and they died from other things. And the hospitals apparently ignored that and then didn't provide them with the right care. I don't know firsthand what's true about this.
CLARK: OK.
SEARS: But what I know is the chance of a healthy child dying from measles who's well nourished is -- it's probably somewhere as high as one in eighty thousand or one in a hundred thousand. It's it's it's a very tiny number. When you look at published research, you'll see numbers as as high as one in ten thousand cases where kids will die of measles. If you include kids who are not well nourished, kids who maybe have like vitamin A deficiency or really slim, not growing well, a little undernourished, if you include them, it's maybe one in ten thousand rate of death. So that's a very small fatality rate for an infection.
The media portrays measles as a deadly infection that's going to kill everyone left and right. That's not played out in our country for many decades now. It's not a fatal infection in a well-nourished nation. So the answer, as measles continues to increase, is let's feed our children healthy. Let's feed our kids vitamin A foods. Let's give them cod liver oil so they get supplemented with vitamin A. If you have enough vitamin A in your system, you should sail through measles without problems. It's not a cure. It doesn't stop you from getting measles, but it should make your measles way less severe. And that's the answer.
And because, honestly, fewer and fewer people are comfortable with the measles vaccine because it's part of the MMR vaccine, the triple live virus MMR vaccine, because fewer people get that vaccine now, I think consequently, we're going to see more measles. And that doesn't mean that the vaccine is why we got rid of measles in the first place. I mean the reason we got rid of measles fatalities is because we all started eating better.
So, I mean, measles is a very complicated discussion. It probably deserves its own hour, you know, alone, and we don't have time for that. But bottom line is the vaccine is one of the riskier ones, so people don't trust it as much anymore. People aren't getting it as much anymore. I don't think we can ignore the likelihood that we're going to see more measles because of that. So we can prepare ourselves, like I mentioned, with good nutrition to kind of weather that increases in measles. Maybe we'll come out with a safer measles vaccine in the future, and people will feel comfortable with that with that again.