Has the Measles (MMR) vaccine scientifically been shown to reduce measles cases or deaths?

Following a Twitter argument about the Measles Vaccine Mandate established in 2020 in Germany for children - I decided to do a deep dive!

A Vaccine For Measles Prevention

CDC currently states (1), that they recommend the MMR vaccine to protect against measles.

Two products are available: M-M-R II and PRIORIX.

What is Measles?

According to Mayo Clinic (2) a 'red, blotchy rash' usually appears on the face. Also, the following clinical symptoms are listed:

Now that we know what clinical measles looks like, let's take a look at the package inserts of the two products!

M-M-R II (rHA)

Merck's package insert (3) lists the clinical trials on page 20.

Here it says, that only the antibody response was compared against the previous M-M-R II HSA vaccine.

--> No clinical indications as endpoints, no real placebo used!

PRIORIX

The second current vaccine, was also simply compared to the antibody response of M-M-R II.

--> Also, here: No clinical indications as endpoints, no real placebo used!

M-M-R II (HSA)

Licensed since 1978 - the package insert (5) of Merck's original MMR vaccine, lists the following clinical trials:

Of which, only reference 29 and 32 mention measles. Reference 32 is not a clinical trial, only 29 is, in which I will discuss the details now:

Development and Evaluation of the Moraten Measles Virus Vaccine

According to the study published in 1968 in JAMA (6), three vaccines were compared for their clinical reaction and their antibody response. I do not have access to the full text, but according to the abstract, the endpoints did not include the case rate of measles cases or deaths.

Also, no placebo was used!

Finally, let's look at the first measles vaccine created by Enders:

Edmonston B and a further attenuated measles vaccine--a placebo controlled double blind comparison.

In this original study from 1967 (7), the authors describe, how they performed a clinical trial of 300 children, that did not have measles before. Split into three groups, they used two measles vaccines, and one placebo, then monitored them for only three weeks (!!).

Moreover, there's no mention in the study of any surveillance of clinical signs of measles illness. They simply measured the fever of the children, and implied that this infers protection. No long term follow up or monitoring was performed. They did simply rely on antibody serum tests, again, to establish efficacy.

As you can see, we've now reached the end of the trail. It goes back to an experiment in 1967 in Honduras where 300 children were monitored for 3 weeks. No efficacy for measles cases or deaths was established. All subsequent studies rely on this original study.

Toxicology

Also noteworthy, that both current products, have not been tested for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or for impairment of fertility.

Conclusion

Hence, as to my research, no efficacy (cases/deaths) for any of these products against the clinical disease of Measles has ever been shown. Instead, these products rely only on antibody serum levels, and earlier studies, which also did not demonstrate any clinical efficacy.

Sources

(1) https://cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html

(2) https://mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/measles/symptoms-causes/syc-20374857

(3) https://merck.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/04/MMR_II-PM_E.pdf

(4) https://fda.gov/media/158941/d

(5) https://fda.gov/media/75191/download

(6) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/341314

(7) https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P